The Mole Agent director Maite Alberdi with Anne-Katrin Titze on her composer Vincent van Warmerdam: “He took the reference of film noir and really adapted it to the emotion of the film and the tone of the film in the soft humour.”
Maite Alberdi’s Oscar-nominated Best Documentary Feature The Mole Agent (El Agente Topo), produced by Marcela Santibáñez, shot by Pablo Valdés with a perfect score from Vincent van Warmerdam, and a wonderful dance scene to The Platters’ Only You (And You Alone) was also shortlisted as Chile’s submission in the International Feature Film category. A highlight of last year’s New Directors/New Films, Alberdi’s immensely entertaining and wildly funny film starts out as an investigation into a specific place and slowly evolves into something much larger. Bruno Dumont’s films may come to mind - all that humanity is breathtaking!
Rómulo (Rómulo Aitken) with...
Maite Alberdi’s Oscar-nominated Best Documentary Feature The Mole Agent (El Agente Topo), produced by Marcela Santibáñez, shot by Pablo Valdés with a perfect score from Vincent van Warmerdam, and a wonderful dance scene to The Platters’ Only You (And You Alone) was also shortlisted as Chile’s submission in the International Feature Film category. A highlight of last year’s New Directors/New Films, Alberdi’s immensely entertaining and wildly funny film starts out as an investigation into a specific place and slowly evolves into something much larger. Bruno Dumont’s films may come to mind - all that humanity is breathtaking!
Rómulo (Rómulo Aitken) with...
- 4/16/2021
- by Anne-Katrin Titze
- eyeforfilm.co.uk
“We’re constantly saying to ourselves ‘we are Oscar nominees! Don’t forget that,’” declares Chilean filmmaker Maite Alberdi about how surreal it feels to be Oscar nominated for her documentary feature “The Mole Agent” while she remains locked down in her native Chile due to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. Alberdi reveals that she has special dispensation to travel to Los Angeles for the ceremony, alongside her co-nominee, producer Marcela Santibañez, and a very special guest for the big night. “I am going to travel with Marcela and with Sergio, the main character of the film,” she says, referring to Sergio Chamy, her endearing octogenarian leading man. “He is now 87 years old and it’s the first time he’s taken a plane in his life and he told us ‘it’s going to be my first trip and my last adventure.'” Watch our exclusive video interview with Alberdi above.
- 4/12/2021
- by Rob Licuria
- Gold Derby
Jayro Bustamante on La Llorona, co-written with Lisandro Sanchez: “I wanted to give women that honor to be in the center of looking for justice in the film.”
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced on Monday, March 15, the nominations for the 93rd Oscars. Best International Feature Film nominees are from Denmark, Thomas Vinterberg’s Another Round; From Hong Kong, Derek Tsang’s Better Days; From Romania, Alexander Nanau’s Collective; from Tunisia, Kaouther Ben Hania’s The Man Who Sold His Skin, and from Bosnia and Herzegovina, Jasmila Žbanic’s Quo Vadis, Aida?.
Jayro Bustamante: “I can understand victims. And I can feel empathy with them.”
The Oscar-shortlisted film from Chile, Maite Alberdi’s The Mole Agent snared a Best Documentary nomination. From Norway, Maria Sødahl’s Hope...
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced on Monday, March 15, the nominations for the 93rd Oscars. Best International Feature Film nominees are from Denmark, Thomas Vinterberg’s Another Round; From Hong Kong, Derek Tsang’s Better Days; From Romania, Alexander Nanau’s Collective; from Tunisia, Kaouther Ben Hania’s The Man Who Sold His Skin, and from Bosnia and Herzegovina, Jasmila Žbanic’s Quo Vadis, Aida?.
Jayro Bustamante: “I can understand victims. And I can feel empathy with them.”
The Oscar-shortlisted film from Chile, Maite Alberdi’s The Mole Agent snared a Best Documentary nomination. From Norway, Maria Sødahl’s Hope...
- 3/17/2021
- by Anne-Katrin Titze
- eyeforfilm.co.uk
The Romanian film “Collective” has been named the best nonfiction film of 2020 at the 13th annual Cinema Eye Honors, a New York-based awards show devoted to all facets of documentary filmmaking.
Kirsten Johnson took the directing prize for “Dick Johnson Is Dead,” while the award for outstanding debut went to Garrett Bradley for “Time,” which also won for its editing.
“Boys State” won the Audience Award, the only Cinema Eye Honor category in which the public was invited to cast ballots.
The Spotlight Award, which was designed to put attention on a film that deserves wider exposure, went to “The Earth is Blue as an Orange,” directed by Iryna Tsilyk. The Heterodox Award, given to a film that combines nonfictional and fictional techniques, was won by Bill and Turner Ross’ “Bloody Nose, Empty Pockets.”
“The Truffle Hunters” won for cinematography, while “Feels Good Man” won in the graphic design or...
Kirsten Johnson took the directing prize for “Dick Johnson Is Dead,” while the award for outstanding debut went to Garrett Bradley for “Time,” which also won for its editing.
“Boys State” won the Audience Award, the only Cinema Eye Honor category in which the public was invited to cast ballots.
The Spotlight Award, which was designed to put attention on a film that deserves wider exposure, went to “The Earth is Blue as an Orange,” directed by Iryna Tsilyk. The Heterodox Award, given to a film that combines nonfictional and fictional techniques, was won by Bill and Turner Ross’ “Bloody Nose, Empty Pockets.”
“The Truffle Hunters” won for cinematography, while “Feels Good Man” won in the graphic design or...
- 3/10/2021
- by Steve Pond
- The Wrap
An 83-year-old man goes undercover in a nursing home in The Mole Agent, Chilean director Maite Alberdi’s Oscar hopeful that’s been shortlisted for both International Feature and Documentary. While it’s filmed and scored in the style of a playful spy movie, it’s most remarkable in its quieter moments, as the true heart of the story emerges.
Sergio Chamy is a gentle Santiago widower who answers a newspaper advert placed by a private investigator. An amusing opening sequence shows several older men being interviewed, each intrigued by the prospect of a clandestine spy mission on behalf of a resident’s daughter, who suspects mistreatment in the home. It is not clear why the advert specified ‘elderly male needed,’ but Sergio’s gender works in his favor when he enters the retirement facility, which is populated largely by lonely women. As he befriends them one by one, his...
Sergio Chamy is a gentle Santiago widower who answers a newspaper advert placed by a private investigator. An amusing opening sequence shows several older men being interviewed, each intrigued by the prospect of a clandestine spy mission on behalf of a resident’s daughter, who suspects mistreatment in the home. It is not clear why the advert specified ‘elderly male needed,’ but Sergio’s gender works in his favor when he enters the retirement facility, which is populated largely by lonely women. As he befriends them one by one, his...
- 3/8/2021
- by Anna Smith
- Deadline Film + TV
One of the best movies contending for Oscars this season follows a solitary character struggling with the insurmountable loss of a loved one, while resisting the romantic overtures of a new companion. It takes place against a poetic backdrop populated by non-actors revealing the fragile nature of their lives. Their stories aren’t always uplifting or neat. But in their collective soul-searching, the movie finds hope in small, ineffable bursts of joy, even in the midst of broader existential gloom.
Many people combing through awards buzz might assume the above description belongs to Oscar heavyweight “Nomadland,” and it does, but there’s another movie in the conversation that hits those same beats with equal success. “The Mole Agent,” Chilean director Maite Alberdi’s tender, unpredictable tale of a man who infiltrates a nursing home at the behest of a private detective, deserves just as much attention from Academy members this...
Many people combing through awards buzz might assume the above description belongs to Oscar heavyweight “Nomadland,” and it does, but there’s another movie in the conversation that hits those same beats with equal success. “The Mole Agent,” Chilean director Maite Alberdi’s tender, unpredictable tale of a man who infiltrates a nursing home at the behest of a private detective, deserves just as much attention from Academy members this...
- 2/23/2021
- by Eric Kohn
- Indiewire
Voting for the shortlist in the International Feature Film Oscar race is currently underway with the expanded roster of 15 titles to be unveiled next week. In a year unlike any other, there is reliably excellent work and another embarrassment of riches among the 93 films submitted from countries all around the world.
In the first of a two-part series, below is the latest installment in our annual look at what films have a good shot of landing on the shortlist. Contrary to last year, when Korea’s Parasite was the hands-down favorite going in — and then pulled off the first-time feat of a foreign-language movie winning Best Picture — this is the most open field in quite a while.
Speaking with the filmmakers behind each of the candidates, some similarities emerged, notably that despite a lack of physical festival exposure for many due to the pandemic, a consensus felt the result made...
In the first of a two-part series, below is the latest installment in our annual look at what films have a good shot of landing on the shortlist. Contrary to last year, when Korea’s Parasite was the hands-down favorite going in — and then pulled off the first-time feat of a foreign-language movie winning Best Picture — this is the most open field in quite a while.
Speaking with the filmmakers behind each of the candidates, some similarities emerged, notably that despite a lack of physical festival exposure for many due to the pandemic, a consensus felt the result made...
- 2/3/2021
- by Nancy Tartaglione
- Deadline Film + TV
At the age of 83, Sergio Chamy got the opportunity of a long lifetime—the chance to go undercover to sleuth out possible skullduggery at an old folks home in his native Chile. The assignment would take all his observational skills and technical savvy.
There was only one problem.
“He was the worst spy in the world,” declares Maite Alberdi, director of The Mole Agent, a charmer of a film that documents Sergio’s sometimes inept but always earnest attempts to accomplish his secret mission. The Mole Agent, which premiered in competition at Sundance last January, is not only contending for Best Documentary at the Oscars, but is also Chile’s official selection as Best International Film for the Academy Awards.
Sergio was recruited for the espionage assignment by Rómulo Aitken, owner of a detective agency retained by a client who suspected her mother, a resident of the nursing home, was being “mistreated,...
There was only one problem.
“He was the worst spy in the world,” declares Maite Alberdi, director of The Mole Agent, a charmer of a film that documents Sergio’s sometimes inept but always earnest attempts to accomplish his secret mission. The Mole Agent, which premiered in competition at Sundance last January, is not only contending for Best Documentary at the Oscars, but is also Chile’s official selection as Best International Film for the Academy Awards.
Sergio was recruited for the espionage assignment by Rómulo Aitken, owner of a detective agency retained by a client who suspected her mother, a resident of the nursing home, was being “mistreated,...
- 1/1/2021
- by Matthew Carey
- Deadline Film + TV
Sergio (Sergio Chamy) answers an ad looking for a man in his Eighties or Nineties to spy on the goings on in a nursing home in Maite Alberdi’s immensely entertaining and wildly funny The Mole Agent (El Agente Topo). The film (a New Directors/New Films highlight and Chile’s Oscar submission) starts out as an investigation into a specific place and slowly evolves into something much larger. Bruno Dumont’s films may come to mind - all that humanity is breathtaking! Not a false note sours what could so easily have gone the cute and brutal, marigold plucky saccharine pensioner horror route. As is the case in Anna Sofie Hartmann’s debut feature Giraffe (another Nd/Df highlight), the fluid boundaries between documentary and fiction only work in the films’ favour.
Sergio is to check into the San Francisco Nursing Home, outside of Santiago, Chile. For three months he is.
Sergio is to check into the San Francisco Nursing Home, outside of Santiago, Chile. For three months he is.
- 12/17/2020
- by Anne-Katrin Titze
- eyeforfilm.co.uk
Barbara Sukowa stars with Martine Chevallier in Filippo Meneghetti’s Two Of Us Photo: Anne-Katrin Titze
Filippo Meneghetti’s Two Of Us (Deux), (co-written with Malysone Bovorasmy and Florence Vignon), starring Barbara Sukowa and Martine Chevallier with Léa Drucker (Mathieu Amalric’s The Blue Room), Jérôme Varanfrain, and Augustin Reynes (France’s Oscar submission); Anna Sofie Hartmann’s Giraffe (produced by Toni Erdmann director Maren Ade) with Lisa Loven Kongsli, Jakub Gierszal and Christoph Bach; Zheng Lu Xinyuan’s The Cloud In Her Room (Ta Fang Jian li De Yun) starring Jin Jing; Maite Alberdi’s The Mole Agent (El Agente Topo), starring Sergio Chamy (Chile’s Oscar submission), and (Fipresci Encounters winner at the Berlin Film Festival) The Metamorphosis Of Birds (A Metamorfose Dos Pássaros), directed by Catarina Vasconcelos are five highlights of the 49th edition of New Directors/New Films, presented...
Filippo Meneghetti’s Two Of Us (Deux), (co-written with Malysone Bovorasmy and Florence Vignon), starring Barbara Sukowa and Martine Chevallier with Léa Drucker (Mathieu Amalric’s The Blue Room), Jérôme Varanfrain, and Augustin Reynes (France’s Oscar submission); Anna Sofie Hartmann’s Giraffe (produced by Toni Erdmann director Maren Ade) with Lisa Loven Kongsli, Jakub Gierszal and Christoph Bach; Zheng Lu Xinyuan’s The Cloud In Her Room (Ta Fang Jian li De Yun) starring Jin Jing; Maite Alberdi’s The Mole Agent (El Agente Topo), starring Sergio Chamy (Chile’s Oscar submission), and (Fipresci Encounters winner at the Berlin Film Festival) The Metamorphosis Of Birds (A Metamorfose Dos Pássaros), directed by Catarina Vasconcelos are five highlights of the 49th edition of New Directors/New Films, presented...
- 12/15/2020
- by Anne-Katrin Titze
- eyeforfilm.co.uk
This documentary, set in an old people’s home in Chile, exasperatingly fails to come clean about its own setup
There are moments of sweetness and sadness in Maite Alberdi’s documentary about an old people’s care home in Chile. But I couldn’t make friends with this film because of its pointless and twee contrivance, which undermined its genuine ideas. Not fakery exactly, but an exasperating lack of candour as to how this whole thing has been set up.
We begin by seeing a Santiago private detective, Rómulo Aitken, who has placed an ad in a paper for an elderly man to be a spy or “mole agent” in an old people’s home, posing as someone needing short-term respite care. With the aid of gadgetry such as hidden cameras and microphones he must find evidence of elder abuse. The detective’s client is evidently a woman whose mother,...
There are moments of sweetness and sadness in Maite Alberdi’s documentary about an old people’s care home in Chile. But I couldn’t make friends with this film because of its pointless and twee contrivance, which undermined its genuine ideas. Not fakery exactly, but an exasperating lack of candour as to how this whole thing has been set up.
We begin by seeing a Santiago private detective, Rómulo Aitken, who has placed an ad in a paper for an elderly man to be a spy or “mole agent” in an old people’s home, posing as someone needing short-term respite care. With the aid of gadgetry such as hidden cameras and microphones he must find evidence of elder abuse. The detective’s client is evidently a woman whose mother,...
- 12/10/2020
- by Peter Bradshaw
- The Guardian - Film News
As we head into Oscar season, some countries are figuring out the advantages of grabbing increased attention with a well-regarded dual entry. Last year, Macedonia submitted documentary breakout “Honeyland” (Neon) for Best International Feature Film, and the movie became the first film to score nominations in both categories.
While the film earned raves, it helped that the movie was well-watched by both the documentary branch and the international committee voters.
In 2020, the most recent international submission is Chile’s World Documentary Sundance selection “The Mole Agent,” which won the Audience Award at San Sebastián. Directed by Maite Alberdi, the dramatic non-fiction film tracks ex-Interpol detective Rómulo Aitken, who selects elderly spy Sergio Chamy to embed in a nursing home and report back the treatment of a woman there.
Other documentaries submitted by their countries this year include Alexander Nanau’s hard-hitting health expose “Collective,” Kenya’s “The Letter” (Maia Lekow...
While the film earned raves, it helped that the movie was well-watched by both the documentary branch and the international committee voters.
In 2020, the most recent international submission is Chile’s World Documentary Sundance selection “The Mole Agent,” which won the Audience Award at San Sebastián. Directed by Maite Alberdi, the dramatic non-fiction film tracks ex-Interpol detective Rómulo Aitken, who selects elderly spy Sergio Chamy to embed in a nursing home and report back the treatment of a woman there.
Other documentaries submitted by their countries this year include Alexander Nanau’s hard-hitting health expose “Collective,” Kenya’s “The Letter” (Maia Lekow...
- 11/19/2020
- by Anne Thompson
- Thompson on Hollywood
As we head into Oscar season, some countries are figuring out the advantages of grabbing increased attention with a well-regarded dual entry. Last year, Macedonia submitted documentary breakout “Honeyland” (Neon) for Best International Feature Film, and the movie became the first film to score nominations in both categories.
While the film earned raves, it helped that the movie was well-watched by both the documentary branch and the international committee voters.
In 2020, the most recent international submission is Chile’s World Documentary Sundance selection “The Mole Agent,” which won the Audience Award at San Sebastián. Directed by Maite Alberdi, the dramatic non-fiction film tracks ex-Interpol detective Rómulo Aitken, who selects elderly spy Sergio Chamy to embed in a nursing home and report back the treatment of a woman there.
Other documentaries submitted by their countries this year include Alexander Nanau’s hard-hitting health expose “Collective,” Kenya’s “The Letter” (Maia Lekow...
While the film earned raves, it helped that the movie was well-watched by both the documentary branch and the international committee voters.
In 2020, the most recent international submission is Chile’s World Documentary Sundance selection “The Mole Agent,” which won the Audience Award at San Sebastián. Directed by Maite Alberdi, the dramatic non-fiction film tracks ex-Interpol detective Rómulo Aitken, who selects elderly spy Sergio Chamy to embed in a nursing home and report back the treatment of a woman there.
Other documentaries submitted by their countries this year include Alexander Nanau’s hard-hitting health expose “Collective,” Kenya’s “The Letter” (Maia Lekow...
- 11/19/2020
- by Anne Thompson
- Indiewire
IMDb.com, Inc. takes no responsibility for the content or accuracy of the above news articles, Tweets, or blog posts. This content is published for the entertainment of our users only. The news articles, Tweets, and blog posts do not represent IMDb's opinions nor can we guarantee that the reporting therein is completely factual. Please visit the source responsible for the item in question to report any concerns you may have regarding content or accuracy.