‘Neruda’ To Make North American Premiere at Telluride Film Festival

Pablo Larrain’s Neruda is included in the 2016 Telluride Film Festival lineup. Oscar-nominated director Larrain will be honored with a 2016 Silver Medallion Award at the festival.

The critically acclaimed film stars Chile’s Luis Gnecco (HBO’s “Profugos”) in the title role, Gael Garcia Bernal as police inspector Peluchonneau, charged with hunting down the dissident Nobel prize-winner, and Mercedes Moran (The Motorcycle Diaries) as Neruda’s wife, Delia del Carril.

Neruda, which premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in the lauded Directors’ Fortnight section, opens on December 16.

It’s 1948 and the Cold War has made its way to Chile. In the Chilean Congress, Senator Pablo Neruda (Gnecco) criticizes the government and the President calls for his impeachment, delegating his arrest to Investigator Óscar Peluchonneau (Bernal).

A failed attempt to flee the country forces Neruda and his wife, painter Delia del Carril (Moran), to shelter with the dissidents of the Chilean underground.

A clandestine Neruda pens the Canto General, a poetic history of the Americas, which transforms him into a literary legend and a symbol for liberty. European artists, led by Pablo Picasso, clamor for Neruda’s freedom, but Peluchonneau is determined to track him down for Chile’s right-wing president.