Neruda (film)
Neruda is a 2016 internationally co-produced biographical drama film directed by Pablo Larraín. Mixing history and fiction, the film shows the dramatic events of the suppression of Communists in Chile in 1948 and how the poet Pablo Neruda had to go on the run, eventually escaping on horseback over the Andes. Plot. After winning the 1946 election with the support of the Communists, Chile's president turns against them, bans the party and orders mass arrests. The senator Pablo Neruda, former ambassador and well-known poet, speaks out forcefully against the repression. Warned that he is in  danger, with his wife Delia he takes the road through the mountains to Argentina, but they are turned back at the frontier and have to go into hiding. A keen young policeman, Óscar Peluchonneau, is appointed to lead the hunt for the fugitives. He reasons that to catch his man he must first get to know him, so he studies Neruda's life and poetry. Neruda meanwhile, wanting to mobilise resistance, makes sudden appearances and leaves volumes of his poetry with people. A game of cat and mouse ensues, with Peluchonneau and his police always a step behind. As the  hunt gets too close, Neruda's friends arrange for some smugglers to take him over the frontier on horseback. Delia has to stay behind and is questioned by Peluchonneau. She tells him that every story has a primary character, with the rest being secondary, and in this story the cop is secondary. This remark unsettles Peluchonneau, who plays the dedicated cop but has never been sure of his inner identity. She then destroys his confidence completely by saying that in this story Neruda with his poetry and political commitment is reality and will endure, but Peluchonneau is merely a fiction . As Neruda's group climbs slowly through the wintry forests towards the frontier, Peluchonneau follows them but, unable to catch up, lets himself die on the snow-covered mountaintop. Neruda eventually finds the corpse in the snow: Peluchonneau's insecure hold on reality has ended and he has melted back into fiction. Neruda flies to Paris, where he is welcomed by his friend Pablo Picasso and becomes a media sensation. Neruda mentions Peluchonneau's name during the subsequent press conference, allowing him to live on through memory. Release. It was screened in the Directors' Fortnight section at the 2016 Cannes  Film Festival. It was selected as the Chilean entry for the Best Foreign Language Film at the 89th Academy Awards but it was not nominated. After the world premiere at Cannes on 13 May 2016, The Orchard and Wild Bunch acquired U.S and French distribution rights, respectively. It was shown at the Telluride Film Festival on 4 September 2016 and the Toronto International Film Festival on 8 September 2016. It screened at the New York Film Festival on 5 October 2016. The film was released in Chile on 11 August 2016 by 20th Century Fox, in the United States on  16 December 2016, and in France on 4 January 2017.