FESTIVALS: *DOK Leipzig (Germany) * Guadalajara International Film Festival (Mexico) * Visions du Réel (Nyon, Switzerland) * Festival del Cinema Africano, d’Asia e America Latina (Milano, Italy) * BAFICI (Buenos Aires, Argentina) * DocsBarcelona (Spain) * New Zealand Film Festival Trust (Wellington , New Zealand) * EDOC- Encuentros del Otro Cine International Documentary Film Festival (Quito, Ecuador) * Edinburgh International Film Festival (UK) * Galway Film Fleadh (Ireland) * Full Frame Documentary Film Festival (Durham, USA) * New Horizons International Film Festival (Warsaw, Poland) * DOXA Documentary Film Festival (Vancouver, BC, Canada) * Taiwan International Documentary Festival (Taipei County , Taiwan) * Zinebi - Bilbao International Festival of Documentary And Short Films (Spain) * Latin American Film Festival (Utrecht, The Netherlands ) * 3736 (Norway) * Rencontres des Cinémas d'Amérique Latine de Toulouse (Toulouse, France) * American Documentary Film Festival (Palm Springs, USA) * San Diego Latino Film Festival (USA) * Women's International Film Festival in Chennai (India) * l’Alternativa - Barcelona Independent Film Festival (Barcelona, Spain) * Festival Biarritz Amérique Latine (France) * Cinema Tropical (New York, USA) * Le chien qui aboie / El perro que ladra (Paris, France) * Festival of Chilean and Argentine Cinema (Northfield, USA) | The Lifeguard
A new day dawns at the beach. Lifeguard Mauricio starts his daily routine: setting up his observation tower, checking the weather forecast and the tides, and updating his logbook. With his deep tan and dreadlocks, Mauricio looks like a chilled-out surfer dude, but in reality, this serious young man is anything but. Rules are rules, and he strictly enforces the ban on alcohol, unleashed dogs and barbecues on his beach. Also, prevention is better than cure: he keeps a watchful eye on the bathers, reprimanding them when necessary with a shrill blast on his whistle. But the vacationers really don't appreciate being ordered around. Neither is Mauricio popular among his fellow lifeguards. Mauricio painstakingly reports every instance of absence by his competitor Jean Pierre, who in turn dismisses Mauricio as a "fake lifeguard." Mauricio is, he concedes, well-suited to finding lost children, but is no use at all in a real emergency: "He blows the whistle and everything, but he doesn't go in the water." How will Mauricio cope when his preventive measures are no use any more, and some boys are at risk of drowning? The Chilean filmmaker followed Mauricio for several days, without providing any commentary, revealing the position of his protagonist among both the beachgoers and his colleagues in just a few, highly telling scenes. PRESS IMAGES: (click to preview) 
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