A cinema marked by history
The overthrow of Salvator Allende's government in 1974 left a gaping wound in the country's history. Repression was bloody, and many political opponents disappeared into camps in the Atacama Desert. This violent history had a profound impact on the filmmakers of the Nuevo Cine Chileno, but also on the generation of their successors. Today, cinema is part of a process of remembering, a history in images, still in the making.
Under Pinochet's government, which lasted from 1974 to 1990, a number of militant and committed filmmakers continued to produce films, despite the closure of production units, which sometimes won awards abroad(Patricio Guzman'sThe Battle of Chile, Manuel Littin's Long Live the President). There are also two films by Alejandro Jodorowsky, also a comic book writer: Santa Sangre and El Topo, a transposition of the Hebrew myth of the Golem.
Silvio Caiozzi'sLa Luna en el espejo(1990), based on an idea by novelist Donoso, and Ricardo Larrain's La Frontera(1991), were great successes just as democracy was returning.
Patricio Guzmàn, poetic & political
Born in Santiago in 1941, Patricio Guzmán is now one of Chile's most internationally acclaimed filmmakers. After brilliant film studies in Madrid, he returned to his homeland to direct The Battle of Chile in 1973, a documentary trilogy made under Allende's government, six months before the military coup. Even today, it remains the most well-documented account of this dark period in history. Patricio Guzmán moved to France to escape threats of execution. Driven by an unconditional love of his native country, he went on to make a number of poignant documentaries, probing with philosophy and finesse the memory of a country as complex as it is captivating. These include La mémoire obstinée (1997), Le Cas Pinochet (2001), Salvador Allende (2004), as well as his latest trilogy: La Nostalgie de la lumière (2010), Le bouton de nacre (2015) and, more recently, La cordillère des songes (2019), which has won numerous prizes and awards (Cannes Film Festival, Berlinale). Immersed in the observatories of the Atacama or the great lakes of the South, Patricio Guzmán moves away from the figures of Allende and Pinochet, while retaining his favorite themes of human relationships, collective memory and the transformation of a world in the grip of capitalism. With sensitivity, he portrays the wilderness of his country and, through his documentaries, maps out the memory of a Chile prey to its past demons and present challenges. In response to the Chilean social movements of 2019, he shot a political and feminist documentary called Mi país imaginario (My imaginary country), released in 2022, in which he explores their consequences.
Alejandro Jodorowsky
Jodorowsky is one of the biggest names in Chilean cinema, and has now turned his hand to writing comic strips. His mysticism has left its mark on his cinematography, which unfolds in strange, dreamlike tales marked by the history of Latin America: The Sacred Mountain is surely one of his finest works. In the 1970s, he embarked on the most ambitious project of his career: Dune, a science-fiction tale whose story still resonates today, just as Denis Villeneuve had released the first part of a brilliant contemporary adaptation. The cast was sensational (including Salvador Dali himself), and the art direction flamboyant. Jodorowsky's Dune never saw the light of day due to production costs, but its storyboard influenced the greatest films of the genre, Star Wars being the first.
The revival of Chilean cinema
Since the 2000s, Chilean cinema has been on the move. Among its leading figures is Andrès Wood, who made a name for himself with La Buena Vida (2008) and Machuca (2004). This film evokes the period of the military coup through the friendship between two boys, one from a bourgeois family, the other from a población in extreme poverty.
The year 2012 was exceptional, with no fewer than 27 domestic productions, including De jueves a Domingo (Dominga Sotomayor, Tiger for Best Film at Rotterdam in early 2012), Joven y alocada (Marialy Rivas, Best Screenplay Award at Sundance 2012) or Violeta se fue a los cielos (Andrés Wood, 2011, about the life of Chilean musician Violeta Parra, International Grand Prix at Sundance).
In 2013, Pablo Larrain's No(about the referendum lost by Pinochet in 1988) was the first Chilean film to be nominated for an Oscar for Best Foreign Film, testifying to a clear revival of national cinema. Now a leading filmmaker, Larrain has no qualms about tackling two of the 20th century's great figures, Pablo Neruda and Jackie Kennedy, in original biopics, both released in 2016. He also co-produced and directed the Princess Diana biopic Spencer , released in 2021. Winner of the Screenplay Award at the Venice Film Festival 2023, his film El Conde tackles the figure of Pinochet, casting the dictator as a vampire who feeds on the blood of his victims.
In 2019, three Chilean films were presented in competition at the 76th Venice Film Festival. The first, El Principe, by Sebastián Muñoz Costa del Río, tells the story of a young man's homosexual tribulations in politically unstable Chile in the early 1970s. It stars Alfredo Castro, a famous Chilean actor and collaborator of Pablo Larrain. Larrain is also represented in the Official Competition with his feminist film Ema. This is the third time that director Pablo Larrain has presented a film at the Mostra, after Post-Mortem (2010) and Jackie (2016). Finally, Théo Court's Blanco en Blanco features Chilean actor Alfredo Castro in a 20th-century neo-western setting, lost in the far reaches of Tierra del Fuego.
Released in 2020 at the Sundance Film Festival, the docu-drama El agente topo (or The Mole Agent) explores, through the figure of a private detective, the loneliness of elderly people in retirement homes. The film has been nominated for a Goya Award for Best Ibero-American Film and an Oscar for Best International Documentary Film in 2021.
1976, Chile, a drama competing for the Camera d'Or award at Cannes' Quinzaine de cinéastes festival in 2022, tells the poignant story of a family on vacation, three years after Pinochet's coup d'état.
Rodrigo Sepúlveda's historical drama Tengo Miedo Torero(I Tremble O Matador), released in 2022, or Alexander Witt's very contemporary thriller Sayen , released in 2023, are also worth mentioning. In this film, we follow a young Mapuche woman determined to track down the mercenaries who killed her grandmother.
A land of diffusion
Today, many Chilean cities, such as Valdivia, Valparaíso and Viña del Mar, boast interesting film festivals. A number of excellent directors (Pablo Larrain, Sebastián Lelio, Carolina Adriazola, Fernando Lavanderos, Dominga Sotomayor...) offer hope of new high-quality productions. However, despite the current production frenzy and the artistic quality of many works, Chilean cinemas remain overwhelmed by American blockbusters, leaving domestic productions to one side.
