You know how they say that only roughly 10 percent of an iceberg is visible bove the surface? Inés, the nine-year-old Chilean protagonist of The Meltdown (El Deshielo), the sophomore feature of actress-turned-writer/director Manuela Martelli (God Will Not Help, The Future), is about to find out the hard way how that concept applies to hidden truths and family trauma.

Her parents are away on business – in charge of mounting an iceberg at the 1992 Universal Expo in Seville, which took place under the theme “The Theme of Discovery.” At her grandparents’ remote ski resort hotel in the Andes, the girl befriends German skier Hanna, 15. But then, the skier suddenly vanishes without a trace. Hanna’s mother and Inés team up on the search, filling each other’s family voids. Maya O’Rourke stars as Inés, while Maia Rae Domagala plays Hanna, and Saskia Rosendahl (Babylon Berlin) portrays her mother, Lina.

Les Films du Losange is handling international sales on the film produced by Ronda Cine, Cinema Inutile and Wood Producciones, with co-production from Elastica Films, Piano and Fundación Río.

Martelli will world premiere the stylized mystery drama in Cannes’ Un Certain Regard lineup in what will be her first Croisette appearance in the official selection. The filmmaker explores how Inés’ coming of age mirrors the lingering wounds of Chile’s political transition to democracy from the dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet – a theme at the heart of Martelli’s feature debut Chile ’76, which premiered in the Directors’ Fortnight at Cannes.

“My main interest is going back to history through characters and through their emotions and experiences, instead of addressing history with a capital H,” Martelli shares. She recalls being 9 years old in 1992, a time that was “permeated by this transition in Chile, which was a very weird and complex moment. For me, it was interesting to overlap the transition of a kid and the transition of a country and the world as well.”

After all, the Berlin Wall had fallen in 1989, while Chile’s military dictatorship officially ended in 1990. “In Germany, you could see how clear this change was. With the fall of [the GDR regime and] these ideas, the wall being down was so graphic,” the filmmaker tells THR. But “there’s a real parallel there, with dictatorships transitioning to democracy.” And the former East Germany ended up opening up to a neoliberal system, which under Pinochet had already been backed by the U.S. and the military regime’s “Chicago Boys,” Chilean economists trained at the University of Chicago, the director says.

The Meltdown is suffused with the visual and audio textures of horror, and deliberately so. “The idea of horror was so present for me in this period of history, because there was something hidden there,” Martelli explains. “I had this idea of walking over dead bodies, because people disappeared, and you didn’t know where they were. They could be anywhere. I wanted everything to feel ambiguous. It’s not that it’s a horror movie, but it kind of flirts with that.”

That also fits the protagonist’s lens and experience. Everything, Martelli highlights, is filtered through Inés’ child’s-eye view — “ambiguous because she is a child, and this is the way a child is experiencing these things — not being able to put things into words, really.”

The Meltdown‘s themes and experiences resonate well beyond the specific historical moment, also reverberating in today’s world full of division and conflict, Martelli says. “There is so much that is echoing,” she tells THR. “In a way, I feel that it’s about something that we are experiencing now. It feels like so much is melting down, and I feel all these things are coming to the surface – really rotten stuff.” You will watch The Meltdown and feel Inés’ pain as she experiences difficult times. But that also mirrors our age, notes the filmmaker: “It’s a very, very difficult moment for the world right now.”

At the center of it all is O’Rourke, the girl playing the nine-year-old, who exceeded all expectations and lived up to the acting challenges of The Meltdown, says the director. “She has such a presence,” she raves. “I was really amazed. She had to act in English and Spanish; she had to act in the snow. It was really hard for her, but Maya was amazing.” Concludes Martelli: “She’s a real warrior.”

How does Martelli feel about directing versus acting? “For me, it’s really interesting to go back and forth, because you learn so much on each side about the other side,” she shares with THR. “When you’re directing, it is like a school for acting. And when you’re acting, it is a school for directing. It’s great to remember both sides, for example, the vulnerable state of acting. There’s nobody more vulnerable on a shoot than actors.”

And how does she pick acting and directing work? “As an actress, I am choosing projects that I really like, mostly when I feel a connection with the director,” says Martelli. “And then I just work on my own projects as a director.”