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The Prince (El Príncipe) is a 2019 Chilean film directed by Sebastián Muñoz, with a script written by Muñoz and Luis Barrales. It’s based upon an obscure novel written by Mario Cruz in the early seventies. The film is set around 1970 in a prison cell in San Bernardo, Chile, just before Salvador Allende was elected President. It’s a dark story about affections and loyalties between prisoners, the search for sexual identity, love, violence, and the rise to power behind bars. Its world premiere was in the Critic’s Week section at Venice International Film Festival 2019, winning the prestigious Queer Lion Prize. The Prince was also selected to compete in San Sebastian International Film Festival, 2009 at the Horizontes Latinos section. .

Plot
Within a prison in Santiago of the 70's, Jaime, a young prisoner who has been convicted for the violent and inexplicable crime of his best friend, has a definitive encounter with "the Stallion", an older man who inspires respect and holds the power behind bars. Searching for protection, Jaime develops with the man a relationship of affection and tenderness, discovers love and the need to be recognized, and later, becoming "The Prince", finally rethink his sexual identity, and the reason for the crime that took him to prison.

Cast

 * Alfredo Castro, as "the Stallion"
 * Juan Carlos Maldonado, as Jaime "the Prince"
 * Gastón Pauls, as "Che Pibe"
 * Sebastián Ayala, as the abandoned
 * Lucas Balmaceda, as Dany, "the Rucio"
 * Cesare Serra, as "the Gypsy"
 * José Antonio Raffo, as López, the prison guard
 * Paola Volpato, as Elena
 * Catalina Martin, as Mónica
 * Jaime Leiva
 * Nicolás Zárate
 * Paula Zúñiga

Production
The project of the film adaptation to the only novel written by Mario Cruz, a little-known author, was cherished many years ago by filmmaker Alicia Scherson, who was in talks with playwright Luis Barrales to prepare the script. Cruz's homo-erotic novel has its heyday in the 70s, it was never available in bookstores and could only be acquired in the newsstands of San Diego Street, in Santiago, becoming a cult novel. Director Sebastián Muñoz found it by chance and, along with Barrales himself, refined the script to its final form. Subsequently, the Chilean production team Niña Niño Films and El Otro Films, Argentine Le Tiro Cine, and Belgian Be Revolution Pictures joined the project. The cast was completed with veterans actors Alfredo Castro (From Afar, The Club) and Gastón Pauls (Nine Queens), plus the young actors Juan Carlos Maldonado (from TV, in his first leading role in films), Sebastián Ayala (theater actor and film director) and Lucas Balmaceda (theater and TV, and younger brother of the Chilean actor Pedro Pascal)

Accolades
Venice

During the Venice festival, most of the Italian specialized press evaluated the film positively. Martina Barone at Cinematographe wrote": ''"a film of impetuous sensuality. A disturbing film, in its multifaceted sexual, emotional and primitive ferocity", Samuele Sestieri at PointBlank wrote: "The first work by Chilean filmmaker Sebastián Muñoz is a dazzling song of love and death, between pleasure and pain" , Carlo Valeri at Sentieriselvaggi wrote: "A claustrophobic film, but at the same time full of desiring impulses. Asphyxiating and passionate as a last hug before saying goodbye" . Finally the film won the Queer Lion Award for the following reasons, according to the Jury: After winning the Queer Lion and having goods reviews in Europe, the first american evaluation came from Boyd van Hoeij from The Hollywood Reporter and it was highly negative, on the bottom line he wrote: "A prison fantasy devoid of personality", and (having been a Jury of the Queer Lion himself ), he questioned the prize awarded and sentenced the future of the movie :"It could pop up at a few other Spanish-language cinema showcases and at indiscriminate queer festivals. The film, filled to the brim with barely clothed men but nary an idea, inexplicably won the Queer Lion in Venice."''
 * "El Príncipe is a passionate portrait of life in a Chilean prison on the eve of Allende’s rise to power in 1970. The savage brutality of prison life is contrasted by intensely emotional relationships between prisoners. Led by a towering Alfredo Castro, the excellent ensemble cast give stirring performances of a powerful script which conveys the paradoxical acceptance of gay attachments in prison at a time when it was not socially acceptable. Sebastián Muñoz’s directorial debut is a bold and erotically charged exploration of recent history which reveals an unexpected tenderness at its heart.".

Film Festivals

 * Venice Film Festival
 * San Sebastián International Film Festival
 * Chicago International Film Festival
 * Mill Valley Film Festival
 * Busan International Film Festival
 * Valdivia International Film Festival