The mole agent, becoming a detective at 80

An ad in the newspaper calling for an over-eighty-year-old full of initiative, self-sufficient, tech-savvy, discreet, ready to carry out an investigation that could have kept him away from home for three months. It is the ad that started The mole agent (El Agent Topo), the Chilean non-fiction film by Maite Alberdi, competing for the Oscars among documentaries. "Marcela and I were watching the live broadcast of the Oscar nominations announcement and when we saw that we were nominated, we hugged and burst into tears ... then laughed" explains the director, in a streaming meeting organized by ' American Cinemateque of which she starred with the producer of the film Marcela Santibanez. The documentary, which premiered in January 2020 at the Sundance Film Festival, is a compelling and emotional journey, fun, engaging and surprising, in the investigation carried out in a retirement home four years ago by the then 83-year-old Sergio Chamy, recently retired widower 'recruited' by investigator Romulo Aitken. The detective had been hired by the daughter of one of the hospital's patients, to find out if her mother was being treated well. Sergio, who enters the retirement home as a new guest to carry out the task, is as clumsy as a detective (he makes his reports on the phone with the speakerphone, struggles to take photos and videos) as sensitive and attentive in listening to the large group of fellow patients (guests are 40 women and 4 men), many of whom are infatuated with the 'newcomer'. A real story that also lends itself to fiction remakes: "We have received various offers - reveals the director - and we are closing a first agreement with the United States on this". Kicking off the project was "the idea of ​​making a documentary with noir tones linked to the world of investigators - he adds -. We looked for various contacts until Romulo opened his office for us and accepted that I work as his assistant. for a few months. I realized that detectives are like documentary makers. They wait a long time until they have the proof, or the image, the testimony they need. And it's the same for us, we spend many days waiting until we capture 'what happens. When the case of the nursing home arrived and I met Sergio, I understood that it was the story to follow ". Maite Alberdi has always loved to immerse herself "in microworlds like this, because they allow us to experience experiences to which we normally do not have access - explains the filmmaker, born in 1982 -. They allow us to better understand the great themes of society". For example, "I had read that the highest number of suicides in Chile is in the group of people between 80 and 90 years old, due to loneliness. A theme that takes on faces here, seeing how extensive that loneliness can be". The elderly we see in the documentary (shot long before the coronavirus emergency, ed), "already lived in fact isolated in solitude, as in a symbolic lockdown". With the pandemic "many outside have realized how deep the separation from people in these structures was. The film has always had themes that I consider universal but now it is certainly even more current". Sergio, now 87, of Syrian origins, will also arrive in Los Angeles for the Oscars, who in his life was the owner of a small glove factory and merchant: "He's getting ready for the red carpet, he just got his passport. Before that. he never flew out of fear. He told us 'This will be my first plane trip and my last adventure.'