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Year of production : 2016

Director(s) : Niles ATALLAH
Writer(s) : Niles ATALLAH
Producer(s) : Lucie KALMAR (MOMERADE), Niles ATALLAH (Diluvio)

"Rey" is a film that recounts a fragmented and delusional chronology loosely based on the historical figure Orllie-Antoine de Tounens, a French lawyer who crossed into southern Chile in the 1860s and claims to have been elected “King of Araucania and Patagonia” by the indigenous population of that region. The adventure of this King ends with his prison sentence and subsequent confinement in the Psychiatric Hospital in Santiago, Chile.
The film leads us through a stream-of-consciousness collage of memories, dreams and hallucinations that depict Orllie-Antoine’s captivity in prison, his crossing into uncharted regions of Patagonia and his contact with the indigenous Mapuche population. The film draws a parallel with Orllie-Antoine’s romantic vision of exploring the “wild” and “undiscovered” territory of Patagonia and the exoticism in filmic representations of “far off lands” and “savages” in the documentaries and Westerns of early cinema.
“Rey” will draw upon influences from the time of early cinema, primarily the chronophotographers of the Victorian era (Etienne-Jules Marey, Eadweard Muybridge etc.), Robert Flaherty’s documentary films and early Westerns. Rather than attempting to situate the film “authentically” in the late 19th century through the use of sets, wardrobe and props as is often done in conventional period dramas, “Rey” will avoid creating an accurate historical chronicle of Orllie-Antoine’s time period. Instead “King” will utilize the structure and texture of films from the late 19th and early 20th centuries in order to reflect upon the nature of film itself and call into question the notion of “authenticity” in cinema.
Such a reflection will parallel the main narrative theme of the film, namely Orllie-Antoine’s romantic vision of the region of Araucania and Patagonia and its inhabitants, recalling the exoticism and mythic stylization of many early 20th century films.