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Meikincine Continues Torrid Sales Run for Chile’s ‘Jailbreak Pact’ with French, Australian Deals (EXCLUSIVE)

Following Chile’s most successful theatrical release of 2020 and high-profile streaming premieres in Latin America and the U.S. as an Amazon Prime Video Exclusive, Argentina’s Meikincine, sales agents on this year’s Argentine Oscar submission “The Sleepwalkers,” has sold Chilean political thriller “Jailbreak Pact” to Swift Productions in France and SBS in Australia.

Recent deals struck following Meikincine’s summer sales push, including June’s virtual Marché du Film, which achieved sales to Movement Pictures in South Korea and Av-Jet International Media in Taiwan.

In September, the company shared with Variety that negotiations are in the final stages for deals in the U.K. and Ireland and offers are being considered from theatrical distributors in China, Canada and India, among others.

“Jailbreak Pact” was released theatrically in Chile in January by Fox, and quickly pulled the highest box office for a domestic film in more than two years before its international premier at the Shanghai International Film Festival in July. The film also received one of South American cinema’s strongest marketing campaigns of the year, backed by Amazon and producers Calibre 71, Storyboard Media, Enlazo Capital Films and Tora Investments.

The fiction feature debut of David Albala, produced by Calibre 71, Storyboard Media, Enlazo Capital Films and Tora Investments, “Jailbreak Pact” is based on a real-life prison break on Jan. 29, 1990, at the tail-end of Augusto Pinochet’s brutal dictatorship. 49 prisoners, some members of the anti-Pinochet armed resistance group Frente Patriótico Manuel Rodríguez, managed a daring and thoroughly planned escape from a political prison in the capital city of Santiago de Chile by digging a series of tunnels over 18 months using rudimentary tools available to the prisoners.

A symbolic victory over Pinochet, the film resonated this year after Chile’s military and police have been denounced in and outside Chile for their brutality, which echoed violence under Pinochet, in attempting to repress public demonstrations across the country. On Oct. 25 of this year, the Chilean people voted for, with an overwhelming majority, a referendum to draft a new constitution.

“Jailbreak Pact” stars Benjamín Vicuña (“Vis a Vis”), Amparo Noguera, (“Death Will Come and Shall Have Your Eyes”), Roberto Farías, best actor winner at the Fenix Film Awards and Mar del Plata Festival for his role in Pablo Larraín’s “The Club,” and Francisca Gavilán, star of Andrés Wood’s Sundance Grand Jury Prize winner “Violeta Went to Heaven.”

“We are thrilled that the film is being seen by so many people in the U.S. and Latin America on such a major platform like Amazon, as well as the interest and successful sales that are being generated in international markets as important as these,” said Storyboard Media co-founder and executive producer Carlos Núñez.

“After long negotiations, we are very excited to have new deals for ‘Jailbreak Pact’ in France and Australia,” Lucia Meik, the Meik in Meikincine, told Variety of the announcement. “We continue looking for new partners in the remaining available territories as the film has tremendous worldwide potential.”

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