Neruda: Gael Garcia Bernal stalks unsuspecting prey

Though he’s currently making headlines for the Oscar buzz surrounding his Natalie Portman-starring historical drama Jackie, Chilean filmmaker Pablo Larraín actually helmed two additional titles in 2016; February’s The Club and the upcoming Neruda, which follows an inspector, Óscar Peluchonneau (Gael García Bernal), as he tracks down famed poet and politician Pablo Neruda. EW has an exclusive sneak peek at a tense scene from the festival favorite.

Set in 1940s Chile, Neruda traces Peluchonneau’s quest to locate the Nobel Prize winner, who was declared a fugitive in his home country for joining the Communist Party after president Gabriel González Videla outlawed affiliation with the political movement in 1948.

In the exclusive clip above, Peluchonneau stalks a band of men traveling on horseback across snow-covered terrain. He plots a bloody attack, aiming to kill “the fat one” roving toward the middle of the pack by shooting him in the head.

“This is going to be impressive,” he tells his companions, who question their leader about the would-be victims’ ability to return fire. Peluchonneau, however, reassures them.

“No,” he says, confidently brandishing a gun. “It’ll set off a chain reaction. Meanwhile, I’ll be shooting straight ahead.”

After debuting as part of the Directors’ Fortnight section at Cannes in May, Neruda traveled the fall festival circuit to Telluride and Toronto, where it received some of the strongest critical reviews of the year. It currently holds an 88 percent rating on Metacritic and was submitted to the Academy by Chile as the nation’s entry for the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar. On Monday, it was nominated by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association in the corresponding Golden Globes category.

Neruda opens in limited release on Friday, Dec. 16. Watch an exclusive clip from the movie above.