La Recta Provincia

Initially conceived as a television miniseries and seen by many as Ruiz’s late career ode to the country he was forced to leave in the early 1970s, La Recta Provincia delves headlong into Chilean folklore and comes up with a winding, digressive, and schizoid narrative that effectively sets the scene for 2010’s similarly epic Mysteries of Lisbon. The great Belgica Castro stars as a caretaker who, along with her son, discovers a mysterious bone on her estate and sets out to find the rest of the skeleton; these two quickly find themselves caught in a demonic wild goose chase as chilling as it is humorous and constructed with stories within stories. Postproduction of the film version by La Cinémathèque française with the support from the National Council for Culture and Arts of Chile.