Economic crimes involve no blood, no guns, and no high-speed chases. Instead, they consist of Excel spreadsheets, emails, and closed-door meetings. The challenge for Que Se Acabe Todo was evident: How do you film the adrenaline of financial fraud when the “body of the crime” is a piece of data?
The answer from director Moisés Sepúlveda was not to seek action externally, but to tighten the form internally. The film, inspired by the high-profile “La Polar” case, is presented as one continuous sequence shot: an uninterrupted choreography where the viewer can barely blink.
However, unlike recent references such as 1917 or the series Adolescence, which seek real-time storytelling, the gamble by JUNTOS is more radical: using the long take to compress time.
Budget as a Creative Catalyst
This decision did not stem from a purely aesthetic desire, but from the reality of the industry. On the eve of getting the “green light,” the team faced the classic independent cinema crossroads: the ideal script versus the actual budget.
“In this film, a virtuous case occurred where the formal modification was what adjusted the budget,” Moisés confesses. Filming in a fragmented way (shot-reverse shot) involves long hours of relighting and set assembly to obtain only minutes of useful material per day. The sequence shot, while requiring exhaustive theatrical rehearsals and an almost zero margin for error, allows for a more agile shoot.
The Magic of the Invisible Cut
Still, there was a narrative problem: the story of the fraud spans years, and a sequence shot is, by definition, a slave to the “now.” This is where Moisés’ experience as a magician, a craft he practiced for 10 years before filmmaking, comes into play. “If I am with you and I see someone walk until they sit down, that’s cinema. But if suddenly: poof! The person is sitting next to us, that’s magic,” he illustrates. “The trick lies in hiding the time it took for the person to walk. In this film, we do exactly that: we hide the passage of months in plain sight.”
Using the concept of misdirection (selective control of attention), the film hides ellipses in plain view. The camera pans, an object crosses the lens, and upon returning to the character, months have passed. “This allows a character to walk out of frame pregnant and enter through the door with her baby in her arms without a single cut,” the director explains. It is an “internal montage” technique that allows the rise and fall of the protagonists to be told without interrupting the visual flow.
The Vertigo of Ambition
Beyond the technical engineering, the decision has a political and emotional core. Que Se Acabe Todo narrates the moral journey of executives who cross the ethical line driven by ambition.
For Moisés, the sequence shot is particularly useful for conveying that vertigo. By eliminating the cut, which in cinema functions as a breath or a logical pause, the viewer remains trapped in the same inertia as the characters. “The grace of the sequence shot is not losing the tension and the reality,” he says.
The visual choreography allows the audience to physically feel what the director calls “the pull”: that wild, animal force that leads to impulsive decisions to cover up shortcomings. By forcing the audience to experience the crisis in a continuum, with no visual escape, the film underscores its final thesis on Chile’s memory: there are stories from which we should not be able to look away.