Director: Maite Alberdi
Chilean director Maite Alberdi steps into narrative fiction with In Her Place, a 2024 drama that trades her usual documentary lens for a tightly wound study of two women bound together by circumstance and silence.
What is In Her Place about?
Cut off from town and neighbors, a mother and her teenage daughter share a crumbling farmhouse where routine has calcified into something closer to ritual. The girl is watchful, oddly formal, unreadable in a way that unsettles anyone who visits; her mother guards the household with a control that reads at first as protectiveness and later as something more complicated. When an outsider's arrival disturbs the household's fragile order, old questions about what actually happened on this land start to surface. Alberdi lets tension build through glances, chores, and the things left unsaid rather than exposition, keeping the story's darker undercurrents just below the surface until they can no longer stay there.
Cast & crew
Elisa Zulueta anchors the film as the mother, playing restraint as a kind of armor, while Francisca Lewin's daughter unsettles by underplaying every scene. Gabriel Cañas, Gabriel Urzúa, Marcial Tagle, and Pablo Macaya round out a small ensemble of outsiders whose visits chip away at the family's isolation.
Context & significance
In Her Place runs 115 minutes and carries a Drama classification, arriving from a Chilean production with a 6.7 rating on IMDb at the time of listing. It marks a notable pivot for Alberdi, better known internationally for observational nonfiction, into a fiction feature built around psychological tension rather than plot mechanics. The shift shows in the film's patient camera work and its refusal to rush toward answers, favoring atmosphere and behavior over dialogue-heavy exposition, a choice that rewards viewers willing to sit with discomfort.
Where & how to watch
In Her Place streams on K-Time with Persian dubbing available, giving Farsi-speaking viewers a fully localized way into the film's slow-burn atmosphere. Reading this page is free and open to everyone; watching the film itself just needs a K-Time account login, no extra steps beyond that.