When it comes to Latina women in the entertainment industry at the moment, there’s no one I want to know more about or learn from than Javiera Balmaceda. And no, it’s not because her family tree is stacked with talented siblings like Pedro Pascal and Lux Pascal. I want to know more about this Chilean because as the Head of Originals for Latin America, Canada & Australia for Amazon Studios, she’s the one making some of the real internal decisions that change representation in Hollywood for people like me.
As head of Originals for Latin America, Canada & Australia she oversees the development and production of original films and television series. Balmaceda oversaw Argentina, 1985, which won a Golden Globe and was the only Latin American film nominated for an Oscar in 2023. She also worked on Pimpinero: Sangre y Gasolina, which made its debut as part of the official selection at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) in 2024. And just this past year she championed Belén, which received a Goya Awards nomination for Best Iberoamerican Film. (Balmaceda also wrote an essay about Belén at Remezcla here.)
The point being, Javiera Balmaceda is bringing Latin American cultura to places like Amazon Studios and Prime Video. And that’s why I was really excited to talk to her about what she’s working on during Prime Video’s first ever International showcase. There they shared exclusive looks at the adaptation for Isabel Allende’s La casa de los espíritus (The House of Spirits), which we talked to Balmaceda previously about here. The showcase also featured Betty La Fea: The Story Continues Season 3 footage and teases for shows and films from India to Japan, Australia, and Germany.
“I think it’s really important that, or at least I take it really seriously, and it’s part of a responsibility, that not all stories coming out of Latin America have to be about trauma, violence, injustice,” Balmaceda said to Remezcla, “And while maybe Belén, there’s an injustice that kicks off our story, right? And the injustice is served, and it’s served by a human rights lawyer who has lived and worked in Tucumán [Argentina.] It’s not a big civil rights lawyer that came in from Buenos Aires, to like uncover this case. It was a hometown girl who saw what was happening and then lifted up to get justice served for a young woman who was wronged.”
For Balmaceda, it’s about how we in “Latin America serve justice and have hope and have beautiful stories to tell.” And if she has the power to help move things along at Amazon Studios, why not tell these stories? Why not champion La casa de los espíritus, adapt it, and tell the story of four generations of different women in one family grounded in love, turmoil, and violence? Because “at the end, it really is about Blanca, our youngest character at the end of the story, about how she navigates this family history and come to a moment of total generational healing. And that feels very of now that we’re finally talking about these things. How do we move forward and learn from our past to move forward to be better human beings?”
While talking about our stories as Latin Americans, it’s important to embody the fact that we aren’t a monolith as a community. “Latin America is a region of layered identities, contradictions, and brilliance.” And that’s something that Balmaceda thinks about as she’s working on something like La casa de los espíritus or something like the entire franchise that Prime Video is building with author Mercedes Ron. Our experiences vary when it comes to being Latina.
“We have to be really responsible not to just tell one story out of Latin America. Or one point of view out of Latin America, or you know… I’m just going to say it. As a white Latina, there’s a important responsibility to show all the colors of Latin America. It just can’t be the point of view that maybe I grew up with and saw. There has to be all of the different things that the territory has to offer,” Balmaceda said.
One of the many projects from Prime Video that Balmaceda mentioned was Chile’s Sin Frenos. It’s a Chilean comedy centered on the immigrant situation in Chile. For Balmaceda, the series did well because it embodies the responsibility that studios have to shape cultural memory. “I think that’s what made it successful for us was exactly taking these themes of today and that we’re… not all Chileans look like me. And all the people coming in don’t look like us, but we’re all still here being good humans and trying to survive and provide for our families.”
That’s what it’s all about at the end of the day. As Latin Americans, as humans, we’re just trying to survive. And it gives me hope as a person in the entertainment industry that there are people like Javiera Balmaceda making the actual doors to tell stories about us that aren’t solely grounded in our pain but also our joys, families, hopes, sorrows, and so much more.
To check out more of my interview with Javiera Balmaceda, head on over to our Instagram or TikTok to learn about how she didn’t know her brother was going to be in La Casita during the Super Bowl and her thoughts on Bad Bunny’s Halftime performance.