The Meltdown () is a 2026 drama film written and directed by Manuela Martelli. It stars Maya O'Rourke, Maia Rae Domagala, Saskia Rosendahl, Jakub Gierszał, Paulina Urrutia, and Mauricio Pesutic. The film is a Chilean-American-Spanish-Mexican co-production. It is set in Chile in 1992 and follows a nine-year-old girl who befriends a teenage German skier at her grandparents' hotel before the girl disappears.
The film premiered in the Un Certain Regard section of the 2026 Cannes Film Festival on May 14, 2026. It was released theatrically in France on August 26 and in Chile on September 3, 2026. In August 2026, the Academy of Cinema of Chile selected it as Chile's submission for Best International Feature Film at the 99th Academy Awards.
Premise In 1992 Chile, nine-year-old Inés stays at her grandparents' remote hotel near an Andean ski resort. There she befriends Hanna, a 15-year-old German competitive skier who is training in Chile. When Hanna disappears without a trace, the search for her exposes secrets surrounding Inés's family and the society around them.
Cast Maya O'Rourke as Inés Maia Rae Domagala as Hanna Saskia Rosendahl as Lina Jakub Gierszał as Alexander Paulina Urrutia as Techa Mauricio Pesutic as Ricardo Lautaro Cantillana Teke as Sebastián Paula Zúñiga as Sonia Luis Uribe as Genaro Daniela Pino as Paty Marcela Salinas as Marcela Roberto Farías as Soto
The principal cast was listed by the Cannes Film Festival and additional cast members are credited in the film's international listings.
Production
Development The Meltdown is Martelli's second feature film as a director, following 1976 (2022). It was developed as part of a planned trilogy examining Chilean history in the latter part of the 20th century.
Martelli said that the story originated years earlier, when she was studying theater and was asked to write a play. The project drew in part on her childhood memories of staying at a ski hotel owned by relatives, where children spent much of their time away from their parents and in areas of the hotel normally inaccessible to guests.
The film was produced by Alejandra García for Ronda Cine, Alex C. Lo for Cinema Inutile, and Andrés Wood for Wood Producciones. It was co-produced with Elastica Films of Spain, Piano of Mexico, and Fundación Río of Chile. Les Films du Losange handled international sales.
Themes The film is set in 1992, during Chile's transition from the military dictatorship to democracy. Its setting coincides with Chile's participation in the 1992 Expo in Seville, where the country exhibited a large piece of Antarctic ice. Martelli used this historical context alongside the disappearance of Hanna to examine memory, silence, and the country's attempts to move beyond its recent past.
Martelli said that she was interested in approaching history through characters' emotions and experiences rather than addressing history directly. She described Inés and Hanna as characters undergoing different stages of transition, with Inés looking up to Hanna as an older role model.
The film's political themes have been interpreted by critics in relation to the culture of silence and the unresolved legacy of the Pinochet dictatorship. Screen Daily described the loss of Inés's innocence as an allegory for Chile's reckoning with its post-dictatorship past, while IndieWire interpreted the film as a critique of the idea that collective forgetting is necessary for a post-fascist country to move forward.
Release The film was selected for the Un Certain Regard section of the 2026 Cannes Film Festival, where it had its world premiere on May 14, 2026. It was subsequently selected for the Horizontes Latinos section of the 74th San Sebastián International Film Festival.
The film will be screened for Japanese Premiere on 28 October 2026 in the Women’s Empowerment section of the 39th Tokyo International Film Festival.
The film was released theatrically in France on August 26, 2026. It was released in Chile on September 3, 2026, distributed by El Camino Pictures and CineColor.
On August 26, 2026, the Academy of Cinema of Chile selected The Meltdown as Chile's submission for Best International Feature Film at the 99th Academy Awards. The selection followed a three-week voting process among members of the academy.
Reception Sheri Linden of The Hollywood Reporter described the film as "haunted and haunting" and characterized it as a slow-burn mystery set in the Chilean Andes.
David Ehrlich of IndieWire gave the film a B− rating, comparing it to The Spirit of the Beehive and Picnic at Hanging Rock. He wrote that the film challenges the idea that collective forgetting is necessary for a post-fascist country to move forward.
On review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 93% based on 14 reviews, with an average rating of 7.2/10.
See also
List of submissions to the 99th Academy Awards for Best International Feature Film List of Chilean submissions for the Academy Award for Best International Feature Film
References
External links