This film is based on a year- long investigation of the ‘Spiniak Case’, a network of child prostitution and pedophilia led by a powerful Chilean businessman. It was one of the most turbulent and confusing for the Chilean judicial, political and journalistic history of the last fifteen years. After getting into the details of the case, through an extensive research of the numerous sources—news stories, case files, court records, and interviews—there was a character in this ill-fated story that fascinated me the most: Gema Bueno, ‘the key witness’, ‘the minor’, ‘Gema Malo’. A twenty-year-old girl, who divided the public opinion and held the nation in suspense for nine months. She eventually ended up behind bars but society was torn about her case. This story is inspired by those events but I turned them into a melodrama in which the media takes the important part in portraying the tragedy of the victims, murders and abuse of children by powerful people. Nothing in this case is what it seems to be. This film stands as a work of fiction that extracts real elements from the case and comes as a stand-alone story that could have taken place in many different countries. Blanquita is an inquiry about personal truth, deception, ethics, and the interpretation of truth. Above all, it is about the double life of a girl or a girl whose lack of opportunities and constant let down by the very institutions which promised to protect her, pushed her to the limits. She seeks her revenge on the class through her testimony against the powerful. My aim was to present a character confronted with the skepticism of some and the blind devotion of others, without judgment. A story about someone who tells the truth or who perhaps adapts her emotions to survive, for pleasure, for love, by necessity or narcissism.
