Mariana di Girolamo

Before picking up a flamethrower, Mariana di Girolamo spent her afternoons studying anatomy at the University of Chile. She wanted to become a midwife. That detour into obstetrics didn't last long, as the weight of her family pushed her toward the drama school at the Pontifical Catholic University.

Her TV debut came in 2014 with the telenovela Pituca sin lucas. It was a direct breakout into Chilean afternoon television, followed three years later by the mass-audience impact of Perdona nuestros pecados in 2017. Over more than three hundred episodes, she played María Elsa Quiroga in a period drama that drew two million viewers every night.

That steady paycheck didn't last long.

The Leap of Faith with Larraín

Pablo Larraín cast her in 2018 for a film without a fixed script, conceived on the fly and built around street dance. She had to cut her hair, dye it platinum blonde and rehearse urban rhythms for weeks. Filming of Ema began in Valparaíso with a tense crew and a lead actress without a roadmap.

And discomfort was the fuel for the character. The camera followed a pyromaniac, calculating dancer who shook up the Venice Film Festival in September 2019. In Spain, the film earned her the Sant Jordi Award for Best Foreign Actress over established figures of European cinema.

But Mariana chose formal risk over repeating the same formula in the industry. In 2020, she accepted experimental director Leonardo Medel's proposal to star in La Verónica.

The film was an exercise in relentless static camera work. The concept features fifty-three long takes in which the actress's face holds the frame without blinking as she brings to life the wife of a footballer surrounded by police.

Nobody shoots like this for the money.

The Madrid Stopover and the Buenos Aires Circuit

In the fall of 2021, she packed her bags in Santiago and settled in central Madrid, looking for work in Spanish productions. She took part in episodic cast roles and attended meetings with European agencies, but the widespread adoption of self-tapes changed the need to physically live in Spain.

So two years later she sold the furniture in her Madrid apartment and returned to the Southern Hemisphere. Most of her most creative challenges awaited her on the other side of the Atlantic.

Argentine cinema offered her a much rougher acting challenge. In 2023, she worked under Lucía Puenzo in the drama Los impactados, playing a veterinarian struck by lightning. She changed her accent, altered her body language and endured four hours a day of prosthetic makeup to film the scars.

In 2024, Luis Ortega cast her in El jockey alongside Nahuel Pérez Biscayart. The production required weeks of equestrian training at the San Isidro racetrack before returning to the official selection in Venice.

The Final Showdown with the Box Office

In 2024, she agreed to return to the Mega studios in Chile to star in the series Los Casablanca, with a packed schedule of one hundred fifty-six episodes. Commercial television once again funded her everyday life while she prepared for the leap into big-budget co-productions.

In 2026, she completed filming on Wild Horse Nine under the direction of Martín Rodríguez.

The shoot required fifteen weeks on location in Patagonia at five degrees below zero.

No stunt doubles were used in the horseback sequences over rocky terrain. The final negative reels were processed at the Cinecolor labs in Santiago at a technical cost of $1.6 million.