The Summer of Flying Fish

Marcela Said's The Summer of Flying Fish (Chile, 2013) - 2013CANdf - RATING: 3 - Using flare tension between white land owners and Mapuche tribes in Chile as a backdrop of coming of age story, The Summer of Flying Fish become the first scripted drama from Chilean docu filmmaker Marcela Said. - In “The Summer of Flying Fish,” Chilean docu director Marcela Said makes a subtle shift into scripted drama, shaping scenes of tension between white landowners and the local Mapuche natives so as to seem unrehearsed. Said’s technique blends flashes of melodrama with such naturalistic choices as shooting on location and working mostly with non-actors, resulting in a challenging fiction/nonfiction hybrid that’s stylistically neither fish nor fowl. From a festival programmer’s perspective, “Summer” is a dream offering: a refined, politically conscious film by a female director that reveals a seldom-seen social dynamic. In commercial spheres, however, it should be a much harder sell.