Sebastian Silva Home Maid Story

Chilean filmmaker Sebastian Silva, born in Santiago, Chile, grew up in a big house, with his family and a live-in-maid always around. At a young age, he was intrigued, some­times annoyed, sometimes comforted, by the presence of an addi­tional authority figure, the maid, not a family member per se, but close enough. His upbringing was the inspiration for his current film, The Maid, which won the World Cinema Jury Prize at this year’s Sundance Film Festival. 

“The notion of a live-in maid has been haunting me for years, and I always tried to express that perplex thought and emotion in an artistic manner. In my late teens, I did a few art pieces about maids, like a long photo album, and some collages. On my first year at film school, I did a short film about it. It took me a couple more years and more in-depth analysis to realize this full length cinematic endeavor, which resulted in The Maid.”

Silva points out that the live-in-maid is a widespread phenomenon not only in Chile but in all of South America. His film revolves around a family in Chile, where the housemaid has been working and living with the family for more than two decades. Things lose balance, common relations begin to change, and new players arrive.

“It’s a drama. There are moments in it when you laugh but it’s out of unease. I’d describe it as a cinema verité — humane, emotional; there is a lot of tension. It’s not an existen­tial film,” he chuckles. “I got very lucky to shoot this film in the very same house I grew up in, where some of the events took place. It was important for me to do that, and as a result the writ­ing came from an organic place — I knew the location and I knew the subject well. It was therapeutic.”

Silva left home at the age of 19, exploring various places, including Los Angeles. He currently resides in New York City. “I’ve been a painter and an illustrator all my life,” he says. “I draw a lot. I do music on the side. I was writing screenplays because I enjoyed it tremendously, and one day I was told to do something with all my stories instead of keeping them to myself. Soon after I found a production house that agreed on my first little film. I was very lucky. Since then it has been a non-stop adventure, and the last outcome is The Maid,” he continues, adding, “I love the collaboration that goes into filmmaking, I love working with people. There are a lot of things I want to say, that I want to show, and I want to portray them through film. I seek to find honesty and truth, and I try to do that in the language of film.” ▼

The Maid opens in Los Angeles on October 23. Visit www.themaidmovie.com