42 days in the dark: how about the first Chilean Netflix series about death in a country

There is a dead woman in a country and the husband is suspected, but he will be acquitted. No, not Marta García Belsence, but the crime accountant Viviana Haeger, and that has shocked Chile since 2010. And she rebuilt it the first Chilean series of Netflix, 42 days in the darkwhich premiered this Wednesday, May 11th.

Ay the 42 days it took to find the corpse in an attic of his own house. Who killed him and put him there?

Hager (Veronica Montes in fiction) disappeared on June 29, 2010 from his home in the exclusive Parque Stocker compound (country), in the city of Puerto Varas, Los Lagos Region, southern Chile.

His wife Daniel Alcaíno (Mario Medina in the series) he was declared missing And so the search began. 42 days later, on August 10, he himself found the remains in the attic: in the fetal position.

fiction and reality

This Netflix adaptation competes with the attraction in reality. The husband, a construction engineer, said he observed a strong odor in the attic. There he found his wife’s body, completely decomposed. all this time several times the police searched the house, no luck no intelligence.

What does the husband really know? What Netflix will reveal on 42 days in the dark?

Fictional names rule here. On June 29, 2010, when Montes disappeared, Medina declared that he had received an allegedly threatening call: “We want money for his wife’s ransom”. No one contacted him again. Did he do it? The clues are doubtful: in Altos del Lago (the country name in the series), his car has keys and the reason doesn’t look like a theft.

In its first six stages, 42 days in the dark tense the facts intelligently, from its beginning and to its end of incomplete justice (as in reality): on December 7, 2015, a certain José Pérez Mancilla confessed that he killed the accountant in his home and that he left the body in the attic.

More: he said he was hired by a wealthy engineer to perform the crime in the amount of 5 million pesos.

detained and released

It all really happened. December 8, 2015 they arrested the husband as the alleged mastermind. This Mancilla worked on one of his construction projects, hence the relationship between the two. But the confession has to be proven. Thus, the judicial details of the case of Haeger (or Montes, depending on the series) have caused dizziness and misery in Chilean society since 2010.

Up to impunity now. That is the reason for being 42 days in the dark. tell and recreate the criminal contradictions and the harsh treatment of the media, from 2010 onwards. How did you get to this bitter gift. In October 2017 alone, Mancilla was sentenced to ten years in prison for the crime of “robbery with homicide”. And they deducted two years of preventive prison.

In September 2017, he was released and acquitted by the Oral Criminal Court of Puerto Montt for lack of evidence, although he was asked for life imprisonment. To make matters worse, two years later, in 2019, the widow -with her two daughters- will sue the State of Chile for legal and police negligencein addition to condemning torture in prison.

The husband (who plays actor Daniel Alcaíno in the series) demanded nearly 2 billion pesos in compensation for all damages. But in February 2021 the family’s lawsuit was eventually dismissed for excess. Although the trial continued in the Court of Appeals of Puerto Montt.

And the legend continues: in April 2021, eleven years after the death of Viviana Haeger (Montes, here, in the shoes of actress Aline Küppenheim), Netflix announced its first original series in Chile, 42 days in the dark. His first inspiration was the book You Know Who: Notes on the Murder of Viviana Haegerby journalist Rodrigo Fluxá.

The family didn’t want to know that Netflix was taking their case for this production. Although there is no doubt that it will have a focus on gender, and that it will try to avoid the sensationalism and the low blows that have spread to television records and some opinionators in Chile since 2010. Of course, Who is responsible for the events?

First class productionang

Another important fact to understand is the size of 42 days in the dark is that it manages the production company Fábula TV, of the Larraín siblings.

The most famous, Pablo Larraín, in addition to his glory as a director of spencer, Jackie or Nerudacreate another series for streaming: Those who escaped (for HBO, with Benjamín Vicuña in the lead), Presidentabout FIFA Gate (for Amazon Prime Video, and directed by Armando Bó), The package (Amazon again) and miss 89 (starzplay).

The last two were under the direction of Argentine Lucía Puenzo. Clarion he was interviewed in February, on the eve of the premiere of miss 89how naked the sexist and even criminal part of beauty pageants in Mexico in the 1990s.

The director, screenwriter and writer spoke in detail about how the Larraín series works to show the worst part of some media and police events with bitter and unexpected twists.

This is inevitable 42 days in the dark, along with changes in its perspective on difficult balance and interaction. In fact, some of the actors and actresses who went through the previous Fábula series (part of Chile’s dramatic staff) have returned to this production, which is being directed by Claudia Huaiquimilla and Gaspar Antillo.

different looks

There is another magnetic focus of 42 days in the dark: the different eyes on which the police, family and judiciary move forward in Puerto Varas, on the southwest shore of Lake Llanquihue. It’s impossible not to look: in the background the snow-capped volcanoes of Calbuco and Osorno stand out. 21 kilometers from Puerto Montt and 302 kilometers from Bariloche.

another success of 42 days in the dark it is to make the scene also define the pulse of the facts. Loneliness versus economic comfort. The cold outside or the youthful climate at the German School, where the oldest of the daughters of Haeger and Anguita (or Montes and Medina, in the Netflix version) went, added social tension to the universe of lake very close to Argentina.

We need to guard the two characters. Claudia Di Girolamo plays Cecilia Montes, the victim’s sister. He will have to tolerate not only the incompetence of the police, where local Justice dictates its bureaucratic speed, and sometimes. will be as villainous as the unpunished culprit (s).

In contrast to criminal chaos, we also need to follow the lawyer Víctor Pizarro (actor Pablo Macaya), who shows its ethics against bias, sexism and annoyance of legal equipment. Meanwhile, the royal family continues to process the tragedy, between fear and a lump in the throat. For a corpse that disappeared and was found 42 days later in his own home.

wd