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Sorcery Review — Sorcery (2023) Film Review from the 46th Annual Sundance Film Festival, a movie directed by Christopher Murray, written by Pablo Paredes and Christopher Murray and starring Valentina Véliz Caileo, Daniel Antivilo, Sebastian Hulk, Daniel Munoz, Daniel Antivilo, Annick Duran and Sebastian Nunez. Filmmaker Christopher Murray’s Sorcery is set in the 19th century on [...]

Continue reading: Film Review: Sorcery: Valentina Véliz Caileo Delivers a Compelling Performance in a Dark and Dreary Film [Sundance 2023]...

Christopher Murray’s Sorcery asks timeless questions about the meaning of justice in a world where the oppressed are tried in courts set up by their oppressors. Set in late-19th-century Chile, specifically the island of Chiloé, it follows Rosa (Valentina Véliz Caileo), a Huilliche 13-year-old seeking to avenge the murder of her father at the hands of the German settlers who had once employed them.

The problem: technically it wasn’t the Germans who killed him but the violent dogs they unleashed, and “dogs can’t go to jail,” she is told by the mayor (a chilling Daniel Muñoz) who recommends she give up her mission to find justice.

Fortunately, Rosa learns she doesn’t need to follow the path of human laws to avenge her father when she meets Mateo (Daniel Antivilo), a Huiliche elder who reminds Rosa she has the ancestral power of her people and introduces...

Chilean director Christopher Murray travels all the way to Chile’s Chiloé Island in “Sorcery,” where a teenage Huilliche girl, Rosa Raín (Valentina Véliz Caileo), witnesses the murder of her father by a German settler. At first, she seems helpless. But when she encounters much-older Mateo (Daniel Antivilo), he makes her aware of her roots and magic that comes straight from the land.

“I was always intrigued by that place. It’s an ambiguous territory,” he tells Variety.

Following its world premiere at Sundance, the film — produced by Larraín brothers’ Fabula and co-produced by Pimienta Films and the Match Factory, the latter also handling sales — will head to Goteborg’s International Competition next.

Flirting with horror, Murray was actually inspired by a true story — the persecution of the members of the Recta Provincia organization back in 1880, accused of witchcraft.

“I found it mind-blowing, this whole concept of state vs. sorcerers.