One year ago, the most unusual possible appearance appeared in the pages of the Chilean diary staff El Mercurio: “Needs adult mayor mayor: celebrated between 80 and 90 years. Autovalent, good health, discreet and maneuvering with technology ”. The message was written by a private detective looking for an old man who would infiltrate like a spy in a hogar of seniors, and investigate if the staff abused him or her by a woman (she was a “client”, suspecting that someone else was suing) . “Are you loco or what devils?”, Sergio Chamy thought when he read the announcement, a former witness who has no idea how to make a video because he urgently needs to change the routine of life. “Tienes que ser muy sutil”, le pide el speurder a Chamy. “If you do not know what to do, if you want to find out, please let us know it. [el trabajo]”.
But he has one more element in this espionage job: during his mission, Chamy was filmed by a team led by the Chilean documentary director Maite Alberdi (known by other films such as Los niños, about chicos with Down syndrome, o La Once, about a group of mayors who live decades ago as friends). Alberdi (Santiago de Chile, 37 years old) has been infiltrated by this senior citizen, thinking that his new largometry terminal in a large denomination of malpractice in old age. The final result of the final result: Top Agents (2020), a documentary filmed as black and impregnated with humor and ternura, reveals more about the abandonment of the women of the elderly by their families than by the staff of hogar. “Solitude is the worst thing about this place,” Chamy told his wife at one point.
Top Agents, which aired in the finals of last year and can currently be seen on Netflix, has been a hit in the history of Chinese chile. It was pre-selected in the Oscars in two categories – more documentary and more extras – even won a public award at the San Sebastián Film Festival, and was recently nominated for the Goya Awards. The PAIS spoke with Alberdi about the film that had captured the international audiences.
Pregunta. How did the process of logging movies momentarily take place in this hogar of seniors? There is a declaration of love for a woman in Sergio, and there are other Alzheimer’s that break in front of the rooms.
Respuesta. The filming process takes place around four months and there is a process in which we hiccup part of this place, we are all there day with the chamber. We started filming with the team before that of Sergio, and it’s been here ever since the world knew we were pregnant. We interact with each other in the same way as: we are accompanying Sergio in this process as he logs in to establish one of the angles that the hubies have attached to him as probably his angles do not exist. What he does to these people, as time goes on, is that it is the same thing that we do with the chamber. It’s a chamber that is all, that is here with passion, that is not directing scenes. Hubo días que no grabamos nada y que la camera mar staba esperando.
Entones is this chamber that hopes, and that also accompanies. There are signs that there are soles, that there are all those soles, and now there is room to be in the chamber here. In this way, they will be able to build a trust that you can use on the stage you say: alguien with the trust to lose face to your friend, and lose face to a camera, very conscious of what we are here. But it is not just a chamber, it is a group that it has agreed to, and that it has listened to, that it has a company for a couple of months. [El documental] is a hecho of a space of spontaneity and spontaneous relations that is dear, wines that are being constructed, and that are not led. Step from the hope, the passion, and the time.
P. The documentary is very respectful of the people who film it, but they do not know that you are also an agent like Sergio, and I trust you to film for the sake of being a very different result from what I hope. Are these the kind of dilemmas?
R. For supuesto that has a great ethical dilemma. They do not know the specific history of Top Agents, in the sense in which I do not know the synopsis. For the theme that we present, yo creo, is the theme of the movie. We say that I have a documentary of the third eda and all that happens to me, and that we want to film it good and bad, and that we have to film it all day. Clearly, they do not know who was filming a movie, and I feel that they are as transparent as possible in the story. Ahí se me planteaba un ethema dilemma. But at the same time, they feel when they see the movie, that the movie represents the super well. It is true that we can see in reality what we are today.
Part of the prejudice that something bad is happening here [en el hogar de ancianos], because we are investigating. I also, in some way, unconsciously, as I am accustomed to do this thing. When I was given the opportunity to believe that this place was good, I clearly had a dilemma of ‘I do not know that this was a movie of a species, and it was not transparent, and in reality entered with another excuse to lie’. But from the moment they come, the fascination, and the prom, and the saint that they represent, this dilemma is also diluted.
P. Do you also think that there should be a more documentary investigation to denounce maltreatment?
R. Overall, since the prejudice to see a malpractice situation, it also seems like I’ve had a movie of detectives making this case super important, and the proof, and what happens, and the client. When it comes to the reality that the most important thing is the relationship and the angle that is produced by the most important people in the Experience. Since then, since the time has come for the apparent identities, it seems that Sergio’s in the movie is what happened and the investigation is not so important.
My real-life detective story is an excuse to see a theme that, without that excuse, quizzes it all. If we invite the public to see a documentary about when only the most important people are known, there is no way to see it. But here it is. I apologize for the inconvenience that you have made in principle, in the final term being a whole lot that the spectator’s mana for in order to discuss topics that we do not want to talk about, that we do not want to question, and that we generally do not know about the month. We will not be able to send them away. When we know how much we want to grow. When young people think of the adult we want to be. But there is no question about the life we want to see.
P. This is a topic that has been discussed more since the social security system in Chile, regarding the pension system for mayors. What is a metaphor for senior citizens in the current context?
R. Creo que is un pelicula in la hay varias cosas que dan cuente del contexto politico contexico. It is the worst pension system for ten people, and a new way of life has increased the expectation of life expectancy without necessarily the opportunities and the labor, social, and livelihoods. Entones this increase in life expectancy has not come associated with a new life, or a new stage that commences. Sino que vejez sigue ligada a una stage van de cierre de oportunidades. In this new political context, there is a need to open up new opportunities and new horizons to the minorities – there are many types of minorities and one of their major figures – and there is a significant discrimination against the major figures, this it’s hard to believe that there is a group of mayors who want to work, who want to be active. The first sequence of the most difficult part is, and the question of how we should consider it. It’s a question about the future.
In this context we are thinking of a new Constitution, and we are thinking of the country we want to keep, part of this future is a projection of how we want to create, how we want to create ours individually, and how we want to create. It is the political question of today. What are the conditions? How do we get along? What are the angles? What places? How can we establish between our dependent people and society? What hacho Chile, in general, is that all the people who depend on it for some motive, physical or mental, are Icelandic. And it’s Icelandic in such a way that it does not generate any type of wine. It’s Islam is what we call romper. And this is part of the discussions that have taken place over the month also in the creation of the new Constitution.
P. What happened to this ancient pond with the pandemic?
R. For supuesto that hubo many lost to the covid, the mayors made the most affected. But the most important thing for me is to think that in this place I have an anterior pandemic, which is the pandemic of solitude. They are socially aroused, the gates of their height are metaphorically closed before the confinement. Many of them do not have ten visitors, have a person who has not visited since ten years ago. O funerals have no llegaban los familiares. Clearly, the pandemic obliges us to close the gates of official manners. But she has a love that she wears symbolically. The people are not staying and they are staying in a burlaja of Islam.
For me, the character of Martha, who is here in the kingdom as ‘foursome and foursome in another time’, for much as she has dementia, they represent everything. In it is the previous confinement. So far, what happened to the pandemic? We are aware of what we are doing and we are determined to ask “uy, do you want to see my dad or my boyfriend or my boyfriend?”. The person emphatic to lame and empresses to think even though there is no way. For the sake of conscience for the otros, not for the one who is estaban ahí [en el hogar de ancianos], which has only soloists and performers.
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