One thing about vampires — being undead means you’re around for an awful lot of history. You might even, as in El Conde, the surreal and darkly funny political satire from acclaimed Chilean director Pablo Larraín, happen to also be a key player in major events yourself, and a particularly abhorrent tyrant at that, accused of numerous human rights abuses during your long rule. And, perhaps, you’re also a literal monster. Specifically, a bloodsucking monster who lives long enough to want to change your ways — or, at least, to change the way the world may remember you.
In El Conde, the count of the film’s title (played by beloved Chilean actor Jaime Vadell) is none other than the notorious Augusto Pinochet, who seized power of Chile in a coup d’état 50 years ago on Sept. 11, 1973. In the film, he’s not dead but, in fact, an elder vampire who’s been kicking around the world’s major conflicts since the French Revolution. And now, 250 years into his presumably eternal earthly existence, the filmic Pinochet has decided it’s time to die once and for all — but not before he forges an unlikely relationship along the way.
Shot on location in remote regions of Chile and rendered in stunning black-and-white cinematography by frequent Todd Haynes collaborator Edward Lachman, Larraín’s provocative comedy premiered at the Venice International Film Festival, taking home the Best Screenplay award. El Conde is the latest entry in Larraín’s award-winning filmography, including Spencer, Ema, Neruda, The Club, No, and Tony Manero, and marks his first feature film for Netflix.
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Jaime Vadell plays an elder vampire living in a ruined mansion in the cold southern tip of Chile, along with his long-suffering wife, Lucia (Gloria Münchmeyer), and his long-serving and extremely loyal butler (Alfredo Castro). As early scenes show, the count has been preying on his victims since the days of the French Revolution. Now, after 250 viciously power-hungry years, sustained by literal human blood as well as the figurative marrow of the workers of his country, he’s plagued by the thought that the world will remember him as a thief and tyrant. He determines to eliminate blood from his diet in order to bring his endless life to a finish. But just as his greedy and hapless middle-aged children arrive at the remote property, the count unexpectedly has another change of heart.
The fictional Pinochet is inspired by the real-life Pinochet, who seized power of Chile in a coup d’état in 1973 and who died in 2006 while under house arrest. He was charged with 300 human rights abuses during his nearly 20-year rule. To create the ironic and deadpan world of El Conde, Larraín told Netflix, “we have used the language of satire and political farce, where the General suffers an existential crisis and must decide if it is worth continuing his life as a vampire, drinking the blood of his victims, and punishing the world with his eternal evil. An allegorical reminder of why history needs to repeat itself in order to remind us of how dangerous things can become.”
No, it’s not based on a book. The original screenplay was co-written by the film’s director, Pablo Larraín, and one of his frequent collaborators, Chilean playwright and screenwriter Guillermo Calderón (The Club, Neruda, A Fantastic Woman).
No, but the story was inspired by a real person: former real-life Chilean ruler Pinochet (1915–2006, in power from 1974–1990), though fictionalized in this highly satirical, fantastical narrative. As director Larraín told Netflix: “I have spent years imagining Pinochet as a vampire, as a being that never stops circulating through history, both in our imagination and nightmares. Vampires do not die, they do not disappear, nor do the crimes and thefts of a dictator who never faced true justice. Together with my collaborators on the film, we wanted to show the brutal impunity that Pinochet represents.”
Most of the film takes place in Chile, along with scenes set in France and England. The cast filmed on location in four different regions of Chile, including the Magallanes region and Chilean Antarctica (where, in the middle of the Southern Hemisphere winter, the crew brought the count’s abandoned mansion to life).
Yes. At the 96th Academy Awards, El Conde cinematographer Edward Lachman was nominated for Best Cinematography. Lachman’s work was also nominated at the 2024 American Society of Cinematographers Awards. At the Venice International Film Festival, El Conde was nominated for a Golden Lion for Best Picture; Larraín and co-writer Calderón took home the festival’s award for Best Screenplay.
The film’s fantastical, enigmatic, Oscar-nominated cinematography is courtesy of none other than Edward Lachman, best known for his numerous collaborations with Todd Haynes (including Carol, The Velvet Underground, and I’m Not There) and Austrian filmmaker Ulrich Seidl’s Paradise trilogy. Lachman is also responsible for the indelible cinematography in films as varied as Werner Herzog’s La Soufrière, Susan Seidelberg’s Desperately Seeking Susan, Sofia Coppola’s The Virgin Suicides, and David Byrne’s True Stories.
Lachman and Larraín wanted El Conde to evoke classic vampire films, from Carl Dreyer’s Vampyr to Nosferatu by F.W. Murnau, but with a notable exception, as Lachman told Netflix’s Queue: “I didn’t feel like I had to use German expressionistic techniques: Playing off of [my Chilean colleagues’] own world, their own sensibility of what horror they lived through, in that reality I could play with it from a naturalistic point of view and create that expressionism. The world itself had its own abstraction.”
To visualize a multidimensional satire that encompasses 250 years, Lachman looked to the future — building a camera that didn’t yet exist — and the past. German camera manufacturer ARRI created the custom ARRI Alexa Monochrome camera, a 4K camera with black-and-white sensors. The lens was repurposed from the 1930s — one that Lachman says was used to shoot black-and-white films like Citizen Kane and Touch of Evil. “Images to me are like music,” Lachman said. “They’re a nonverbal form of communication. And what makes film different than a painting or a photograph or a play or music is the language of images and how they move in time and space, that they create a psychology for the audience. You experience the story being told.”
Watch El Conde on Netflix now.
