THE MELTDOWN (Cannes 2026) – Review by Diane Carson
The Meltdown (El Deshielo) metaphorically parallels 1990s Chilean politics.
Writer/director Manuela Martelli’s Meltdown/El Deshielo is set in an isolated Andean ski resort hotel in 1992. Despite its focused, personal story seen through the eyes of nine-year-old Inés (Maya O’Rourke), parallels to Chilean political tragedies are transparent. The more one knows about Chile’s turbulent 1990s period, the better one grasps the multifaceted complexity of ideas. Nevertheless, on its own, The Meltdown offers an engaging story of needy Inés and the impact when her German friend, fifteen-year-old skiing superstar Hanna (Maia Rae Domagala), suddenly disappears. As the futile search for Hanna results in few clues and no resolution, Inés watches with increasing awareness of disturbing and unacknowledged elements, registering every nuance, her innocence upended by vigilant observation.
Through televised footage in the opening scene, Meltdown begins with an immediate invitation to consider the larger political context stunningly linked into the narrative. For Ines’ parents participate in the transport of a sixty-ton Antarctic iceberg to the Chilean pavilion at the 1992 Universal Exposition of Seville. An admittedly bizarre artistic statement, it also symbolizes the impermanence of the national pride. With this expanded agenda established, Inés takes over center stage. At her grandparents’ resort where promising skiers train, Inés wanders freely, warmly accepted and largely unchallenged by all. She’ll innocently cuddle up with accommodating hotel guests and staff, sleeping in various rooms. This leads to Hanna befriending Inés before, quite inexplicably, Hanna does not return one evening from a training run. The sole female skier in her group of promising athletes, Hanna has tolerated misogynistic bullying by her male colleagues while garnering the unwanted, extra attention of coach Alexander (Jakub Gierszal). As the search for Hanna extends over days, her German mother Lina (Saskia Rosendahl) adds a heartbreaking and angry presence, a woman authorities insult, dismiss, and mistreat. And the tragedy persists.
In press notes, Martelli identifies her inspiration for The Meltdown as the conviction that it is “harder and harder to heal after the death of a child, or a parent, or a partner, who has been assassinated and tortured.” But she believes observing the past from a distance permits perspective, an essential way to look at the present and what “we have inherited as a society.” Establishing that background, the press notes list key dates. For example, the film begins two years after the Chileans’ NO vote removed General Augusto Pinochet from office, with democracy restored when Patricio Aylwin officially became President in March 1990. The 1992 Expo was meant to signal a new Chile, one having moved forward. But writer/director Martelli believes the ghosts of the past haunt the present generation and the past must be urgently reexamined. For, in Martelli’s words, “Memory doesn’t simply move forward: it shifts, it transforms, it is reinterpreted, layers are added to it, and at times it also moves backward.” And for Inés, she will carry this trauma and knowledge she alone gains for all her life.
Technically, cinematographer Benjamin Echazarreta’s interior and exterior compositions capture a beautiful world with ugly secrets. The snow and ice hide the truth for only so long. Anchored in Inés’ watchful, absorbing gaze so intently observing the adult evasions and lies, Echazarreta occasionally includes glass reflections suggesting a solid as well as an evanescent reality, the latter more elusive, hazy, and inscrutable. In contrast, Mariá Portugal’s music and Javier Umpierrez’s sound aggressively and discordantly emphasize the danger and disaster of the personal and political circumstances. Through the specificity of the particular, Marcelli has indicted a broader world, one that defined the past and continues to influence the present. The Meltdown screened in the Cannes Film Festival 2026 Un Certain Regard sidebar.
