Pablo Larraín is staying in Chile’s haunted political history for his next film. According to La Tercera’s Culto, the Chilean filmmaker is preparing to shoot “Once,” a new Netflix-backed feature about the September 11, 1973 coup d’état in Chile, told largely through the perspective of President Salvador Allende and his inner circle during the final hours before the bombing of the Chilean Presidential Palace, and Allende’s death.
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The film will begin shooting in August and marks Larraín’s second feature collaboration with Netflix after “El Conde,” his 2023 Venice-winning satire that imagined Augusto Pinochet as an aging vampire. Netflix later released a synopsis describing “Once” as “eleven intertwined stories” unfolding across the 18 hours before the attack on La Moneda.
Alejandro Goic, a frequent Larraín collaborator, will play Allende. The actor previously appeared in Larraín’s “Neruda,” where he played Jorge Bellet. The cast also includes Marcelo Alonso, Octavia Bernasconi, Gabriel Cañas, Alfredo Castro, Roberto Farías, Fernanda Finsterbusch, Camila Milenka, Valentina Muhr, Marcial Tagle, and Lukas Vergara, though Netflix has not yet specified their roles.
The story will also feature members of Allende’s family and closest circle, including his daughters Beatriz “Tati” Allende and Isabel Allende, both of whom were at La Moneda that day and left only after their father ordered them to go. Hortensia Bussi, Chile’s first lady at the time, will also appear as a character.
Larraín is assembling a major international team for the production, including Oscar-nominated cinematographer Rodrigo Prieto, whose credits include “Killers of the Flower Moon,” “The Irishman,” “Barbie,” and “Brokeback Mountain.” The crew also includes “Oppenheimer” VFX supervisor Andrew Jackson and production designer Guy Hendrix Dyas, who previously worked with Larraín on “Spencer” and “Maria.”
La Tercera reports that “Once” is expected to be one of the most ambitious Chilean and Latin American productions in recent memory, with a budget reportedly around $15 million. Netflix will finance and distribute the film globally.
The screenplay is written by Larraín and Guillermo Calderón, the filmmaker’s regular writing partner since “The Club.” The two won Best Screenplay at the 2023 Venice Film Festival for “El Conde,” where Larraín closed his acceptance speech with a pointed “no to impunity.”
The new film also continues the chief central preoccupations of Larraín’s career: Chile’s dictatorship, its origins, and its aftermath. “Tony Manero,” “Post Mortem,” “No,” and “El Conde” all circle that history in different registers, from black comedy and political thriller to historical drama and grotesque satire. “Post Mortem” may be the closest spiritual cousin to “Once,” as that film follows a morgue employee in Santiago before and after the coup, and includes a harrowing scene involving Allende’s autopsy.
No release date has been announced yet, but Larraín tends to work quickly, so a 2027 festival bow does not seem out of the question. And on a personal note, as a Chilean-born writer whose family fled to Canada because of the U.S.-backed dictatorship that followed the coup and lasted 17 years, “Once” is both a deeply personal project to anticipate and one of Larraín’s most intriguing films in years.
Rodrigo Perez is the founder and editor-in-chief of The Playlist, which he launched in 2008. He has worked in entertainment journalism since 2000, including at MTV, and has written for SPIN, IndieWire, Pitchfork, Complex, Magnet, and various music, film, and entertainment publications over the past two decades.
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