
Sebastián Silva
Directing
Biography
Sebastián Silva Irarrázabal (born 9 April 1979; Santiago) is a Chilean director, actor, screenwriter, painter and musician. The second of seven brothers, Sebastián Silva was born in Santiago, Chile on 9 April 1979. After graduating from the Catholic Colegio del Verbo Divino school in Santiago, he spent a year studying filmmaking at the Escuela de Cine de Chile (“Film School of Chile” in Spanish) before leaving to study animation in Montreal, Canada. Here, he mounted the first gallery exhibition of his illustrations and started the band CHC, which went on to record three albums. Silva's second illustration show brought him in contact with Hollywood but a “frustrating period” in Los Angeles, spent pitching to Steven Spielberg and others, brought no tangible results. Leaving Hollywood, Silva started two more bands, Yaia and Los Mono, the latter of which was signed by British record label Sonic360. He exhibited his art in New York City while writing the script for what would become his first feature, La Vida Me Mata (“Life Kills Me” in Spanish; written with Pedro Peirano). Back in Chile, Silva recorded a solo album, Iwannawin & Friends and directed his debut feature, Life Kills Me. Released in 2007 by Chilean production company Fabula, Life Kills Me went on to win Best Film at the Chilean Pedro Sienna Awards in 2008. In February 2008, setting aside a script based on his trip to Hollywood, Silva wrote (with Pedro Peirano) and directed his next film: The Maid. The film, released in 2009, told the story of a maid trying to keep her job after having served a family for 23 years. It has won multiple awards, including the Grand Jury Prize - World Cinema Dramatic at the 2009 Sundance Film Festival, and was nominated for Best Foreign Language Film at the 2010 Golden Globes Awards and the 2010 NAACP Image Awards. Film critic David Parkinson called the film "an exceptional study of the emotional investment that domestics make in the families they serve." Silva partnered with Pedro Peirano again to write his next film, Old Cats, which premiered in 2010 at the Valdivia International Film Festival in Chile and at the New York Film Festival in the United States. He then made his TV debut in 2012 when he wrote, directed and produced the HBO short-form TV comedy show The Boring Life of Jacqueline. The success of The Maid took Silva to Sundance again in 2013 to premiere two new films, Magic Magic and Crystal Fairy, both starring indie actor Michael Cera. Silva won the Sundance Directing Award: World Cinema - Dramatic for Crystal Fairy and the LA Times described Magic Magic as “an exploration of insanity, selfishness and emotional brutality.” Silva told the LA Times that Cera's character in Magic Magic is "one of my favorite characters I've created in a movie." His latest film Rotting in the Sun premiered at the Sundance Film Festival and screened at Outfest.
Known For

An exploration of the life of Michael Peterson, his sprawling North Carolina family, and the suspicious death of his wife, Kathleen Peterson.
The Staircase

Cecil Gaines was a sharecropper's son who grew up in the 1920s as a domestic servant for the white family who casually destroyed his. Eventually striking out on his own, Cecil becomes a hotel valet of such efficiency and discreteness in the 1950s that he becomes a butler in the White House itself. There, Cecil would serve numerous US Presidents over the decades as a passive witness of history with the American Civil Rights Movement gaining momentum even as his family has troubles of its own. As his wife, Gloria, struggles with alcoholism and his defiant eldest son, Louis, strives for a just world, Cecil must decide whether he should take action in his own way.
The Butler

A group of friends turn their love for horror into a peculiar business, providing horror to those who need it, in a dreamy Latin American country where the strange and eerie are just part of daily life.
Los Espookys

When an aspiring actress in a military role-playing facility falls in love with a soldier cast as an insurgent, their unsimulated emotions threaten to derail the performance.
Atropia

It’s 1948 and the Cold War has arrived in Chile. In the Congress, prominent Communist Senator and popular poet Pablo Neruda accuses the government of betraying the Party and is stripped of his parliamentary immunity by President González Videla. The Chief of Investigative Police instructs inspector Óscar Peluchonneau to arrest the poet. Neruda tries to escape from the country with his wife, the painter Delia del Carril, but they are forced to go underground.
Neruda

A gambler’s bet spiraling into chaos, a gangster's prophetic visions, a pop star’s dark entanglement, a doctor’s desperate race against time to rescue his beloved... Four interconnected stories reveal life unfolding through four emotional pillars — joy, passion, grief, and love.
The Air I Breathe

In this modern love story set against the Austin, Texas music scene, two entangled couples — struggling songwriters Faye and BV, and music mogul Cook and the waitress whom he ensnares — chase success through a rock ‘n’ roll landscape of seduction and betrayal.
Song to Song

Rudy, an American of Hispanic descent, whose south-of-the-border looks show him no mercy during an immigration raid in a migrant worker factory. As his luck goes, he is caught with neither money nor his ID and is deported to Mexico - without speaking a word of Spanish!
Born in East L.A.

Madly explores love in all its permutations in six short films from a vibrant group of filmmakers representing Japan, Argentina, the UK, the US, India, and Australia. All forms of love are on display in this anthology. And all manners of feelings expressed from jubilance to depression are done so strongly.
Madly

In remote Chile, a vacationing young woman begins to mentally unravel; meanwhile, her friends ignore her claim until it's too late.
Magic Magic

The making of Alejandro González Iñárritu’s Babel is chronicled through an observational approach that captures the creative and logistical challenges of filming a deeply interconnected narrative across four continents. Directed by Carlos Armella and Pedro González-Rubio, the documentary reveals Iñárritu’s commitment to authenticity and cultural sensitivity, from collaborating with local actors and communities to meticulously recreating environments. Through behind-the-scenes footage and the director’s reflective commentary, it delves into themes of human connection, the boundaries we hold within ourselves, and the visceral nature of communication, offering profound insights into the philosophy behind the acclaimed film.
Common Ground: Under Construction Notes

A group of teenagers come together to form a peculiar hip-hop band called "Los Pulentos"
Pulentos

A filmmaker facing an existential crisis goes on a vacation to a Mexican gay nudist beach, where he meets a social media celebrity who convinces him to collaborate with him on his new TV show. But one disappears and another embarks on a wild journey through Mexico City to find him.
Rotting in the Sun

Tyler joins his friend on a trip to the Catskills for a weekend birthday party with several people he doesn’t know. As soon as they get there, it’s clear that (1) he’s the only black guy, and (2) it’s going to be a weekend of heavy drinking. Although Tyler is welcomed, he can’t help but feel uneasy in “Whitesville.” The combination of all the testosterone and alcohol starts to get out of hand, and Tyler’s precarious situation starts to feel like a nightmare.
Tyrel

A gay couple enlists the help of their friend Polly to create a baby. Meanwhile, they must also contend with their homophobic neighbour who becomes a big nuisance.
Nasty Baby

Jamie is a boorish, insensitive American twentysomething traveling in Chile, who somehow manages to create chaos at every turn. He and his friends are planning on taking a road trip north to experience a legendary shamanistic hallucinogen called the San Pedro cactus. In a fit of drunkenness at a wild party, Jamie invites an eccentric woman—a radical spirit named Crystal Fairy—to come along.
Crystal Fairy & the Magical Cactus

Raquel has been the live-in housekeeper for a kind, reasonably wealthy family for half her life, and the joyless repetition of the job has begun to take its toll. Increasingly dependent on painkillers, Raquel resorts to pranks and childish avoidance to antagonize the family’s college-age daughter and a procession of new servants, all in the hopes of protecting her precarious power within the home. Her antics successfully push everyone away, until new maid Lucy actually pushes back.
The Maid

A wayward NYC actress searches for meaningful relationships -- both in the real world and on the internet.
The Boring Life of Jacqueline

When the evil billionaire Cachirula kidnaps Juanín Juan Harry to complete her bizarre animal collection, the 31 Minutos crew embarks on a chaotic rescue mission, proving that friendship is always worth the chaos.
31 Minutes: The Movie

Isidora, an old woman, discovers that her mind is quickly deteriorating. At an apparently relaxed dinner table, she will desperately try to hide her state from her daughter, a demanding woman who awaits any sign of senility in order to take way everything she has.