1960. Fernando Nobile, a Sicilian immigrant and exceptional dancer, arrives in Chile with his young wife Anna, fleeing a violent past. In Coya, a mining town, he’s nicknamed “el Feo” – “the Ugly” – due to his looks, in sharp contrast to his wife’s beauty.
His amazing dancing skills quickly earn him fame in the community, however, Anna’s sudden death plunges him into isolation.
Miraculously survived after an explosion at his workplace, Fernando tries to return to normal life, but the townspeople avoid him, convinced he brings bad luck. Only a young student, La Flaca, challenges superstition and dares to dance with him. They fall into a passionate summer romance, which ends abruptly when she returns to her boyfriend. Heartbroken, Fernando disappears, becoming a local legend, while his friend Eleazar, who witnessed it all, finally fulfills his dream of writing a novel: Historia de amor con hombre bailando.

DIRECTOR’S NOTES:
The magical, surreal world of Hernán Rivera Letelier’s novel, brought to my mind the sweet yet profound voices of authors like Gabriel García Márquez, Isabel Allende or Laura Esquivel.
In their pages, I rediscovered that ability to narrate with irony and, with that uniquely South American fatalism, to explore themes like destiny, death, love, and also the deep and universal ecstasy of sex, and therefore, life.
When I reached the last page of the novel, I thought its film adaptation had to express all its poetry and make the audience identify with its protagonist: Fernando Nobile, this thin man with a horse-like face, this ugly looking but surprising character who, through his obsession with dance, embodies the lives of all of us, our dreams, hopes, loves, but also confronts with the painful awakening from illusions. I envision a film that stages the alchemy between music and body, going beyond choreographic performances and letting the camera convey emotions, hopes and tragedies, up to the end of the story when Fernando gives the audience his final performance: a swirl of sand in the desert and a beam of light, in the crowded Salon: his spirit dancing to the tune of Mambo No. 8.