The Prince (2019 film)

Within a prison in Santiago of the 70's, Jaime, a young prisoner who has been convicted for the violent and inexplicable crime of his best friend, has a definitive encounter with "the Stallion", an older man who inspires respect and holds the power behind bars. Searching for protection, Jaime develops with the man a relationship of affection and tenderness, discovers love and the need to be recognized, and later, becoming "The Prince", finally rethinks his sexual identity, and the reason for the crime that took him to prison.

• Alfredo Castro, as "the Stallion"
• Juan Carlos Maldonado, as Jaime "the Prince"
• Gastón Pauls, as "Che Pibe"
• Sebastián Ayala, as the abandoned
• Lucas Balmaceda, as Dany, "the Rucio"
• Cesare Serra, as "the Gypsy"
• José Antonio Raffo, as López, the prison guard
• Paola Volpato, as Elena
• Catalina Martin, as Mónica
• Jaime Leiva
• Nicolás Zárate
• Paula Zúñiga

The project of the film adaptation to the only novel written by Mario Cruz, a little-known author, was cherished many years ago by filmmaker Alicia Scherson, who was in talks with playwright Luis Barrales to prepare the script.[5] Cruz's homo-erotic novel has its heyday in the 70s, it was never available in bookstores and could only be acquired in the newsstands of San Diego Street, in Santiago, becoming a cult novel. Director Sebastián Muñoz found it by chance and, along with Barrales himself, refined the script to its final form.[1] Subsequently, the Chilean production team Niña Niño Films and El Otro Films, Argentine Le Tiro Cine, and Belgian Be Revolution Pictures joined the project. The cast was completed with veterans actors Alfredo Castro (From Afar, The Club) and Gastón Pauls (Nine Queens), plus the young actors Juan Carlos Maldonado (from TV, in his first leading role in films), Sebastián Ayala (theater actor and film director) and Lucas Balmaceda (theater and TV, and younger brother of the Chilean actor Pedro Pascal)

During the Venice festival, most of the Italian specialty press evaluated the film positively. Martina Barone at Cinematographe wrote": "a film of impetuous sensuality. A disturbing film, in its multifaceted sexual, emotional and primitive ferocity",[6] Samuele Sestieri at PointBlank wrote: "The first work by Chilean filmmaker Sebastián Muñoz is a dazzling song of love and death, between pleasure and pain",[7] Carlo Valeri at Sentieriselvaggi wrote: "A claustrophobic film, but at the same time full of desiring impulses. Asphyxiating and passionate as a last hug before saying goodbye".[8] Finally the film won the Queer Lion Award for the following reasons, according to the Jury:

El Príncipe is a passionate portrait of life in a Chilean prison on the eve of Allende’s rise to power in 1970. The savage brutality of prison life is contrasted by intensely emotional relationships between prisoners. Led by a towering Alfredo Castro, the excellent ensemble cast give stirring performances of a powerful script which conveys the paradoxical acceptance of gay attachments in prison at a time when it was not socially acceptable. Sebastián Muñoz’s directorial debut is a bold and erotically charged exploration of recent history which reveals an unexpected tenderness at its heart.[9]

After winning the Queer Lion and having goods reviews in Europe, the first American evaluation came from Boyd van Hoeij from The Hollywood Reporter (and a former juror of the Queer Lion himself[10]) and was a negative one, the bottom line being he wrote: "A prison fantasy devoid of personality."[11]

On review aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes, The Prince holds an approval rating of 92% based on 13 reviews, with an average rating of 7.38/10. [12]

• Venice Film Festival[13]
• San Sebastián International Film Festival[14]
• Chicago International Film Festival[15]
• Mill Valley Film Festival[16]
• Busan International Film Festival[17]
• Valdivia International Film Festival[18]

• The Prince at IMDb
• The Prince, official international Trailer