Bad Influence(Mala junta)

Using as a backdrop the ongoing conflict between Chile’s Indigenous Mapuche communities and the corporate forces who want to strip them of their lands, Mapuche director Claudia Huaiquimilla’s gripping first feature film focuses on the burgeoning friendship between two teenagers. After the rebellious Tano is arrested for his participation in a gas station robbery, he is sent from the city of Santiago to live with his estranged father in the remote mountain community of Wallmapu. There he meets Cheo, a shy Mapuche boy, who is being bullied at school. Though friendship between these two very different youths seems unlikely, the complications and violence of the world around them bonds them in unexpected and transformative ways.