SLAMDANCE FILM FESTIVAL 2026 REVIEW: If you find the superhero genre to be pretty vacant, take a swig of the Chilean street-punk superhero feature Matapanki, written and directed by Diego Fuentes. Ricardo (Ramon Galvex) is a broke a*s punk rocker living with his sweet little Grandma (Rosa Penaloza). He hangs with his fellow punkers Mella (Diego Bravo) and Claudia (Antonia Mccarthy), swilling suds and going to underground punk shows. One night, after a police raid on a punk party, Ricardo finds a bottle of “matapanki”, which is the Chilean word for mixing up several different types of alcohol together (known stateside as a “suicide”).
This kaleidoscope of booze gives Ricardo super strength when he drinks it. Now he can beat up all the cops that hassle him and other punks out on the sidewalk. However, his superhero antics has grisly consequences, including drawing the unwanted attention of the President of United States (Rodrigo Lisboa). When the President decides to invade Chile on a made up pretense, it is up to Ricardo to get drunker than s**t and beat the President’s a*s in the street.
I have been waiting all my life to see a film like Matapanki, and I didn’t even know it until I saw it. Fuentes does a perfect rendition of a superhero flick made in the style of the cinema of transgression. It is incredibly shot in black and white by Vicente Correa, who catches the raw kinetic energy that is organic to punk. There are lots of grain in the images that makes the film look like something that could have played with a Richard Kern film in an East Village nightclub. Fuentes uses the lack of budget as a badge of honor, using an DIY production design held together by safety pins.
“… a broke a*s punk rocker living with his sweet little Grandma …”
This production relishes being the opposite of the cinematic spectrum from the big budget Hollywood cape opera; every time the blockbuster flies high, Fuentes swings low, hitting his crusty target every time. It is exactly like one of those hand-drawn, Xerox mini-comics you could buy on the drag in Austin along with a fat nickel of weed in the 90s.
Members of Generation X in the US will immediately understand the anti-establishment look of Matapanki, as black and white zines were how we would dream when sleeping off the King Cobra back in the day.
The powers in Matapanki are pretty much Popeye-like, substituting liquor for spinach (as a lot of us would do in youth). However, the cheap FX used are priceless when the powers activate. It is achieved by what looks like someone coloring the print with a crayon, which is exactly what the made-in-the-streets aesthetic calls for.
The punk music is top notch as well, filled with the violent goofiness that good punk trades in. I do not know if Chile has the same punk generation gap between old school and new school that the US has. The tunes sound fast enough and angry enough to be old school, but also has some decent melodies that are jukebox catchy (if the jukebox has a secret drug habit). The humor is downright funny, with lots of jet black satire, as well as clever revisions to the superhero genre.
Like a good punk song, it stuffs a lot of chaos into a very short running time, clocking just over 70 minutes. It goes by in what feels like Seven Seconds, both the length of time and the hardcore punk band. This is the kind of entertainment that will rip the seats right out of the theaters as well as, later on, make for an epic TV party, Black Flag style. If you like your indie cinema wrapped in studded black leather, you need to mosh to Matapanki. It will blow your a*s patch right up from under you, like a mohawked Marilyn Monroe.
"…a superhero flick made in the style of the cinema of transgression. "
