And the Oscar goes to... ¡Una Mujer Fantástica! (A Fantastic Woman), from Chile!

Next Sunday, March 4, at five in the afternoon, the Dolby Theater in Los Angeles will be adorned with its red carpet for the 90th award ceremony of the Academy Awards, the most important film event of the year, which is seen by millions of spectators around the planet, and I suspect that by many aliens from their spacecraft and their bases in Antarctica.

The ceremony last year was a comedy of errors with a script by William Shakespeare, when after having announced that the winner as best film was La La Land, they had to correct and get off the stage to the Lalaladians to climb the Moonlight team, which was the real winner.

But an Oscar ceremony has to have scandals to be respected: that if Di Caprio had to wait a lot of years to win the statuette in 2016, that if Marlon Brando rejected it in 1973 when he won for The Godfather or how many nominations is able to accumulate Meryl Streep, which has already 21.

There are always polemics about the decisions of the members of the Academy in all the categories, except one, the Oscar for the best film in a foreign language.

That's why I recommend that when they announce the foreign language film Oscar winner, you must run and look for it anywhere, because I bet you one steemcoin to that it is an extraordinary film.

If you do not believe me, remember these titles: Mephisto, Pelle the Conqustador, Burned by the Sun or last year The Salesman... In Spanish, think of La Belle Epoque, All about my mother, or The Secret of their Eyes.

This year, among the nominees is the Chilean "Una Mujer Fantastica" (A Fantastic Woman) by Sebastián Lelio, which, I believe, will win. And I do not say this because of my Spanish speaking solidarity, but because the film leaves you breathless, and it is a jewel of script and direction of actors, direction of photography, editing and music.

One of the secrets of the director and screenwriter Lelio, is that no take is left over: absolutely all takes are loaded with dramatic action, gestures and looks of the actors, which drives the story into a suffocating way, and after five minutes you have surrendered, and become the accomplice of the touching story of the transgender protagonist.

The camera takes you by your hand. You are standing there, walking among the fears, the hatreds and the loves that, like a wave, bathe you from the film.

The chosen soundtrack goes from the classic salsa "Periódico de Ayer" by the great Tite Curet Alonso, who was sung Héctor Lavoe, to the opera Xerxes by Haendel. And the protagonist sings both, so imagine the vocal and emotional record that Mrs. Daniela Vega, the leading role actress, is capable of giving us.

As the film progresses, the enigmatic signs acquire meaning, and they become what Tarkovsky called "visual dramaturgy", reaching its splendor, its zenith, exactly in the middle of the movie, in the dream sequence of the woman struggling against the breeze, whose photo illustrates this comment.

I have no doubt that just as the sequence of the Campanella football stadium in "The Secret of their eyes" has become a cult for students and moviegoers, this extraordinary sequence, a metaphor for the struggle against destiny, mounted on the aria of the Haendelian opera in which the mezzo cries for her lost husband, is going to become another classic.

And the politics, the history of Chileans, their prejudices and their historical tares, could not be left out.

Nobody talks about the disappeared, it's another world already: however, when you see those guys who curse the transgender from a car, when you see that they raise her and gag her with plastic tape, you cannot stop thinking that if this brave girl had had that age in 1973, when Marlon Brando rejected the Oscar, the parents of these black tie psychopaths would have ridden her in a helicopter and thrown her into the sea.

So far, only six films in Spanish have won the Oscar for the best film in a foreign language:

1982: Begin the begin, by Jose Luis Garci (Spain). 1986: The Official History, by Luis Puenzo (Argentina). 1992: La Belle Epoque, by Fernando Trueba (Spain). 2000: All About My Mother, by Pedro Almodóvar (Spain). 2004: The Sea Inside, by Alejandro Amenábar (Spain). 2010: The Secret of their Eyes, by Juan José Campanella (Argentina).

Will it be "A Fantastic Woman" the seventh?

It is sweeping around the world, from a Silver Bear in Berlin to the best script, to the Goya in Spain.

I hear bets...

Se oyen apuestas…

Óscar Reyes-Matute (Samuel Ibn Motot / שמואל אבן מתת)

Crew: Script and direction: Sebastián Lelio Production: Juan de Dios Larraín, Pablo Larraín, Sebastián Lelio, Gonzalo Maza. Music: Matthew Herbert Director of Photography: Benjamín Echazarreta Edition: Soledad Salfate Cast: Daniela Vega, Francisco Reyes, Luis Gnecco

Trailer of "A Fantastic Woman":