Chile’s Screen Origins Act came into force at 00:01 on 23 September, requiring films that use material from state-supported archives to receive a digital rights certificate before public screening. By late morning, the culture ministry had confirmed that a flaw in the new portal exposed production records to users who were not authorised to manage them.
The National Screen Office said 11 film projects were affected and that three records had been changed before access was suspended. Six releases, including the Santiago drama The Blue Ledger, are now on hold while producers and officials check whether clearance details remain valid.
Releases caught in the first day
The Blue Ledger was due to open in 38 cinemas on Friday. Its producer, Hildir Markós, said the distributor received a notice before dawn that the film’s certificate no longer matched the portal record, despite the production having obtained its archive permissions months ago.
Markós said the film’s cast and crew had spent two years preparing for the release and that the pause could cost the production CLP480 million (about €470,000) in postponed ticket sales, advertising and cinema fees. “We obeyed the new rules, and the system turned our proof into a question mark overnight,” he said.
We obeyed the new rules, and the system turned our proof into a question mark overnight.
Hildir Markós, producer
The Act was designed to settle disputes over photographs, newsreel clips and other material held by public collections. Productions must submit a certificate linking each archive item to a licence; cinemas can check the approval before booking a film. The screen office says the requirement applies to about 70 releases this year, not to films that use no covered archive material.
Portal shut as checks begin
Officials suspended the portal at 09:20 and told distributors not to rely on certificates issued or altered on Wednesday. The office said the weakness lay in how the service linked production accounts with their rights records, and that it had found no evidence that video or audio from the archives had been downloaded.
Rotimi Adewura, a spokesperson for the screen office, said technicians were comparing the portal’s activity log with paper licences and email confirmations from archive collections. “We will not restore a certificate just because the screen displays it,” Adewura said. “Every affected film will be checked against its original permissions.”
The shutdown has also unsettled smaller cinemas, which often depend on Chilean releases to fill weekday schedules. Stef Jorlink, who manages a 120-seat independent cinema in Valparaíso, said two planned screenings had been replaced with older films and that advance ticket holders were being offered refunds or new dates.
The culture ministry said it would publish a verified list of cleared titles by Friday and reimburse cinemas for direct cancellation costs, but gave no estimate of the bill. Producers say the law itself is not the problem; they want a paper-based route to certification until the portal is tested and the six postponed release dates can be confirmed.
