Tarde para morir joven

Dominga Sotomayor : 2018
Too Late to Die Young

During the summer of 1990 in Chile, a small group of families, living in an isolated community right below the Andes, builds a new world away from the urban excesses, trying to put to good use the emerging freedom that followed the recent end of the country's dictatorship. In this time of change and reckoning, the teenagers Sofía, Lucas and Clara struggle with their parents, their first love, and their fears as they prepare a big party for New Year's Eve. They may live far from the dangers of the city, but not from the ones of nature. Dominga Sotomayor's second full feature, inspired by memories of her own childhood in the Ecological Community of Peñalolén, was winner of the Leopard for Best Director when it premiered in competition in the Concorso internazionale section at Locarno Film Festival 2018.

Una mujer fantástica

Sebastián Lelio : 2017
A Fantastic Woman

Marina and Orlando are in love and plan to spend their lives together. She is working as a waitress and adores singing. Her lover, twenty years her senior, has left his family for her. One night, when they return home after having exuberantly celebrated Marina's birthday at a restaurant, Orlando suddenly turns deathly pale and stops responding. At the hospital, all the doctors can do is confirm his death. Events follow thick and fast: Marina finds herself facing a female police inspector's unpleasant questions, and Orlando's family shows her nothing but anger and mistrust. Orlando's wife excludes Marina from the funeral; she also orders her to leave the apartment – which on paper at least belonged to Orlando – as soon as possible. Marina is a transgender woman. The deceased's family feels threatened by her sexual identity. With the same energy she once used to fight for her right to live as a woman Marina, with head held high, now insists on her right to grieve. Sebastián Lelio's feature was winner of the Silver Bear for Best Screenplay and the Teddy Award for Best Feature Film when it premiered in competition at Berlin International Film Festival 2017.

Las plantas

Roberto Doveris : 2015
Plants

"Do you think plants could have souls? That we might even be able to talk to them?" For a whole summer, 17-year-old Florencia has to look after her older brother Sebastián, who is trapped in a persistent vegetative state. She feeds him, washes him, changes his diapers, and cuddles up to him in bed. From time to time she reads to him from a comic called Las Plantas, which is about plant souls that take control of human bodies at full moon. In these days of loneliness, she will wonder about her brother. Is he awake despite his condition or is he just a body without a soul? The plants become a metaphor for how Florencia feels at times about her own but perhaps even more so about Sebastián's body, as if it were possessed by another entity, while her brother's consciousness lies dormant. At night, Florencia makes contact with men on the internet. Images of her monotonous daily routine and dreamlike sequences of a vibrant fantasy world merge to create a fascinating tale of a young woman as she self-determines her own sexual awakening. Roberto Doveris' feature premiered at Valdivia International Film Festival 2015, and was awarded the Grand Prix of the Generation 14plus International Jury at Berlin International Film Festival 2016.

La memoria del agua

Matías Bize : 2015
The Memory of Water

A moment of inattention is all it took to change the lives of Javier and Amanda forever: lives that are now divided between "before" and "after", between how everything was and should have been. All because of an accident that neither of them could have prevented. It will take a long time to reach closure on the death of their four-year-old son. Amanda can't bear the daily ache of seeing her home – and Javier. Everything reminds her of her child, and so she decides to leave her husband and plunge into her work as an interpreter, whilst Javier, who continues to work as an architect, can't accept the separation and seems unable to face the loss of his son. The love story of a young couple who are forced to question their lives and their relationship. But when the possibility of a second chance for both of them arises, they know that a decision will change the direction of their lives forever, and realise that the past they share should not be forgotten. Matías Bize's feature premiered in competition at Venice Days 2015.

No soy Lorena

Isidora Marras : 2014
I am not Lorena

Actress Olivia is visiting her mentally ailing mother when she gets a peculiar telephone call: a collection agency is looking for one "Lorena Ruiz", insisting that she pay her sizeable, and significantly overdue, phone bill. Olivia maintains that they have the wrong number, and quickly hangs up. But when she begins to receive calls from other collection agencies, Olivia can do nothing to convince them that she is not Lorena Ruiz. A visit to one of the agencies only makes things worse, and the mysterious Lorena's problems start to bleed strangely into Olivia's financial and personal life, until even her family and friends grow suspicious of her. When a stranger calls her cellphone demanding a meeting with Lorena, Olivia determines to take matters into her own hands and track Lorena down, a decision that brings her into contact with the seedier side of Santiago culture. Based on the director's real-life experiences, who for almost two years received calls trying to collect another woman's debts, Olivia's identity is eventually put to question by her surroundings as well as by herself, in this Kafkaesque tale of the horrors of bureaucracy. Isidora Marras's feature debut premiered at Toronto International Film Festival 2014, and had its European premiere at Stockholm Film Festival 2014.

El árbol magnético

Isabel Ayguavives : 2013
The Magnetic Tree

Bruno is returning to the country of his birth after a long absence. The house in the countryside where he lived with his family is up for sale and they all gather to bid the place farewell. Nela and her parents, are finalising the preparations for the arrival of Bruno, one of the girl's cousins, who has been living in Europe for some time. Soon after, the rest of the clan start arriving in order to celebrate the family reunion. Through the eyes of each of the characters we gain an insight into their thoughts, whilst not knowing for certain what is going on. We begin to observe their expressions, movements, codes, behaviour and games, which are all just as routine as they are, but brimming with nostalgia because their memories determine their way of connecting with one another and also enable them to continue being a close-knit family. A visit to the "magnetic tree", a local curiosity with strange properties, will awaken in Bruno almost forgotten feelings and affections for his past. Isabel Ayguavives's feature debut premiered at San Sebastián International Film Festival 2013, and was winner of the Award for Best Chilean Film at Valdivia International Film Festival 2013.

La isla

Dominga Sotomayor & Katarzyna Klimkiewicz : 2014
The Island

A group of people gather for a family reunion in a house on a beautiful, isolated island. They wait for Jaime, who should have arrived earlier that day. But as the evening comes and he doesn't appear, a strange anxiety overwhelms them. The group dismantles and the family members wander away from the house separately, confronting the sea and an unspoken fear that slowly consumes them. A magical, subtle film, the first collaboration between Dominga Sotomayor and Katarzyna Klimkiewicz, who were inspired by a Wisława Szymborska poem and personal memories of youth. Their film was winner of the Tiger Award for Short Films at International Film Festival Rotterdam 2014.

Matar a un hombre

Alejandro Fernández Almendras : 2014
To Kill a Man

Jorge is a tranquil, hard-working family man whose neighbourhood has become overrun by a fringe class of street thugs. His comparatively fortunate existence makes him the target of their intimidation one night, when one of them robs him of his insulin needle. Jorge's teenage son boldly tries to stand up for his father, which only serves to unleash the bully's terrorising reign of threats upon the family. Jorge and his wife, Martha, seek protection from the legal system but are subjected to civic drones and bureaucratic procedure, so they remain vulnerable. As Jorge's family suffers from fear and humiliating anguish, the situation paints him as a deficient patriarch, until he's cornered into defending what's his. A thriller based on real events, accurately portraying an extreme tension that makes plausible the unthinkable. Alejandro Fernández Almendras's third feature premiered at Sundance Film Festival 2014, and was winner of the Grande Prémio at IndieLisboa 2014.

Magic Magic

Sebastián Silva : 2013

Teenager Alicia arrives in Chile on her first trip out of the United States. Visiting her close friend Sarah, she tries to fit into a different world, but if Alicia could just get some sleep, everything would be all right. As she makes her way through the surreal, unfamiliar countryside with Sarah and her boyfriend Agustín, his sister Barbara, and their strange American friend Brink, Alicia's insomnia slowly takes control. The difference between what is happening in reality and what is happening in her own mind becomes less and less clear to her. And after giving hypnosis a try, to help solve the problem, things only get worse. As her waking nightmare continues, will her friends be her salvation or her downfall? The story of an unstable personality pushed to the edge, Sebastián Silva's unsettling film examines sexual repression and the fear of loss, showing how the smallest choices we make can have significant and insurmountable consequences. The film premiered at Sundance Film Festival 2013.

Joven y alocada

Marialy Rivas : 2012
Young & Wild

Daniela is a quiet and elegant 17-year-old, but her thoughts are pretty wild and revolve mostly around sex and her need for self-fulfilment. Daniela lives for her blog. Only here can she speak openly about what turns her on. She has to do this in secret when she's at her parents' house, because she's from an upper-class family of wealthy, devout Protestants for whom everything is forbidden. Daniela is expelled from school after she sleeps with a boy. Her mother now sees her as a disgrace to the family and uses sanctions in an attempt to coax her daughter back onto the straight and narrow path to faith. But Daniela, who is not prepared to wait any longer for tenderness and sexual fulfilment, embarks instead on a passionate love affair with her girlfriend. Bursting with flamboyant illustrations and delighting in glaring juxtapositions, this is a film that is as experimental as its protagonist. In this, her debut feature, Marialy Rivas also experiments with the structural characteristics of a blog and the seamless fragmentation of the internet. Winner of the Sebastiane Award at San Sebastián International Film Festival 2012.

Lucía

Niles Atallah : 2010

Lucía is a young woman who works as a seamstress in a factory and lives with her father, Luis, in an old house in Santiago. The story takes place in December 2006 during the weeks from the ex-dictator Pinochet's funeral to Christmas Eve. Through the simple observation of Lucía's daily life, we are allowed access into a hidden and neglected world of a generation striving to recover from the military dictatorship; into situations marked by historical events that continue to influence contemporary Chilean society. On Christmas Eve, Lucía and Luis dress up as Santa Claus and Santa's helper and entertain the children of a doctor currently under suspicion for working as a torturer during Pinochet's regime. Much of the story takes place in Lucía's house, a place seemingly suspended in time since the 1970s, filled with dark and untouched territories, remnants of the traumas of its past. In this environment, Lucía struggles to keep up the household, support her elderly father and at the same time, nourish hopes for her own future. The film premiered at San Sebastián International Film Festival 2010.

Verano

José Luis Torres Leiva : 2011
Summertime

During one hot summer day, little things happen to the visitors and workers of an old thermal resort in the mountains of southern Chile. They experience the long vacation hours in nature, sleeping in the sun, learning how to drive, cleaning the house, kissing for the first time, swimming at night or just walking and talking, while the day slowly unravels into small fragments of happiness and discovery. To wander in the forest, the joy of losing oneself, to not belong to any place. The film is a mosaic filled with minor everyday occurrences and moving observations about the certainties and uncertainties of love, family and other relationships. It is a story that walks a thin line between beauty and desperation. A story that lives in the interior of the characters but also on the exterior of what surrounds them. The film premiered in the Orizzonti section at La Biennale di Venezia 2011.

Hija

María Paz González : 2011
Daughter

The story of a mother and daughter who cross Chile in search of a relative they both don't know. The mother hopes to find her sister, while the daughter expects to find her real father. Along a 2000 kilometre road, they will be forced to confront their childhood expectations with a present which may prove to be even more uncertain and hostile than the fantasies involved in building their identities. Presented as a personal quest, it is a journey where lies become reality and where the reality takes the shape of a film: that of a documentary road movie based on imaginary facts; a story that gives meaning to the fantasies that built up their identity. The loss, the lack, the loneliness and the need of knowing their origins, the truth and the lies, the complicity and dialogues all mingle through an original yet harmonic voice into an intimate portrait of a family's origin. If telling a family's history reflects the country's one, Hija stages the origin and mythology of Chilean society.

Sentados frente al fuego

Alejandro Fernández Almendras : 2011
By the Fire

Daniel and Alejandra, a Chilean working-class couple both approaching forty, have been together for a couple of years. Abandoning the promise of the city, they decide to buy a piece of land and move out to the country. But Alejandra suffers from a serious illness that will slowly consume her dreams and put Daniel's love and patience to the test. As their hopes and plans hang in the balance, Daniel must come to terms with the harsh realities of physical labour on the land, and the discovery that his actions have not always been good and noble in his strive for perfection. Following them over the course of a year, this is the story of a couple willing to fight all manner of adversities to make their dream of a new life together a reality. Capturing the texture of everyday life, the story unfolds against the stunning scenery of the Región del Biobío with an unhurried, near-documentary intimacy.

Navidad

Sebastián Lelio : 2009
Christmas

It's Christmas Eve, Aurora and Alejandro have run away to a secluded cabin in the hills outside Santiago, where she once lived and now her mother has sold with everything in it, including furniture and its many memories. She's there with the excuse of recovering some of her dead father's records. The two friends confront one another over the mysterious Luisa, a girl who has been sending Aurora love letters. Alejandro becomes jealous and paranoid about Aurora's secret relationship, and her plans to spend New Year's Eve with Luisa in Argentina. Alejandro is no longer interested in a relationship and leaves the cabin, but finds 15-year-old Alicia, unconscious in the greenhouse, running from home and searching for her father, whom she never met. Aurora persuades Alejandro to stay and the couple nurse Alicia back to health, becoming more and more intrigued by this attractive and waifish young woman – a three-way attraction simmering beneath their fascination. From now on, the three will only have each other, as orphans, each one in their own way, eventually discovering a closeness that will soothe their alienation and loneliness, even if only for the night.

De jueves a domingo

Dominga Sotomayor : 2012
Thursday till Sunday

It all begins on a Thursday when nine-year-old Lucía and five-year-old Manuel go on vacation with their parents to the north of Chile. It all ends on a Sunday. It's the children's distant and fragmented outlook on this possible last family trip. This Chilean road movie is set entirely in and around the car belonging to a middle-class family on a four-day trip to the north of Chile. It will be their last journey as a family. We occasionally catch a glimpse of marital problems, but the crisis is largely implicit. For instance, we often only see the backs of the silent parents' heads, seen from the perspective of the children in the back seat, who only have a partial idea of what is going on. The journey that starts so cheerfully with all kinds of games in the car quickly acquires melancholy undertones. The children only want to go to the beach, while the father is heading for a new life in another apartment and the mother primarily yearns for a place which no longer exists, where everything remains the same as it was.

The Motorcycle Diaries

Diarios de motocicleta
a film by Walter Salles

Based on the journals of both Alberto Granado and Ernesto Guevara, the man who would later become 'Che', the film follows a journey of self-discovery, tracing the origins of a revolutionary heart. With a highly romantic sense of adventure, the two friends leave their familiar surroundings in Buenos Aires on La Poderosa, 'The Mighty One', a rickety 1939 Norton 500. Although the bike breaks down during the course of their eight month journey, they press onward, hitching rides along the way. As they start to see a different Latin America in the people they meet on the road, the diverse geography they encounter begins to reflect their own shifting perspectives. By the end of their journey the two are questioning the value of progress as defined by economic systems that leave so many people beyond their reach – and their experiences awaken within them the men they will later become.

In December 1951, 23-year-old medical student Ernesto Guevara de la Serna, 'Fuser' to his friends, one semester away from graduation, decides to postpone his studies to accompany his 29-year-old biochemist friend Alberto Granado, 'Mial', on a projected four month, 8,000 km long dream motorcycle trip throughout South America, starting from their home in Buenos Aires. Their quest is to see things they've only read about in books about the continent on which they live. Their planned route is ambitious, taking them first south into Patagonia, then north across the Andes, along the coast of Chile, through the Atacama Desert and into the Peruvian Amazon in order to reach Venezuela in time for Granado's 30th birthday. However, due to La Poderosa's breakdown, they are forced to travel at a much slower pace, taking a further three months to arrive in Caracas, and covering a total distance of 13,240 km.

During their expedition, Guevara and Granado encounter the poverty of the indigenous people, and begin to gain a better sense of the disparity between the "haves" (to which they belong) and the "have-nots" (who make up the majority of those they encounter). In Chile they meet a penniless and persecuted couple forced onto the road because of their communist beliefs. Guevara and Granado ashamedly admit that they are not out looking for work as well. They then accompany the couple to the Chuquicamata copper mine, where Guevara angrily witnesses the treatment of the workers. Later, there is also an instance of recognition when Guevara, on a luxurious river ship, looks down at the poor dark-skinned indians on the small wooden boat hitched behind.

However, it is a visit to the ancient Inca ruins of Machu Picchu in Peru that solidifies something in Guevara. His musings are then sombrely refocused to how an indigenous civilisation capable of building such beauty could be destroyed by the creators of the now decaying and polluted urban sprawl of nearby Lima. His reflections are interrupted by Granado, who shares with him a dream to peacefully revolutionise and transform modern South America, to which Guevara quickly retorts: "A revolution without guns? It will never work."

Later, in Peru, they volunteer for three weeks at the San Pablo leper colony. There, Guevara observes both literally and metaphorically the division of society between the toiling masses and the ruling class, as the staff live on the north side of the river, separated from the deprived lepers living to the south. To demonstrate his solidarity, Guevara refuses to wear rubber gloves during his visit choosing instead to shake bare hands with the startled leper inmates.

On their last evening at San Pablo, spent celebrating with the staff, Guevara confirms his nascent egalitarian, anti-authority impulses, while making a birthday toast, which is also his first political speech. In it he evokes a pan-Latin American identity that transcends both the arbitrary boundaries of nation and race. His encounters with social injustice transform the way Guevara sees the world, and by implication motivate his later political activities as a Marxist revolutionary. He makes his symbolic 'final journey' that night when despite his asthma, he chooses to swim across the river separating the two societies of the leper colony, to spend the night in a leper shack, instead of in the cabins of the doctors. This journey implicitly symbolises Guevara's rejection of wealth and aristocracy into which he was born, and the path he would take later in his life as a guerrilla, fighting for what he believed was the dignity every human being deserves.

A beautiful and tender insight into the early life of Che Guevara, one of the most memorable and iconic figures of the 20th century. The film closes with an appearance by the real 82-year-old Alberto Granado, along with pictures from the actual journey and a brief mention of Che Guevara's eventual 1967 CIA-assisted execution in the Bolivian jungle.

Machuca

A film by Andrés Wood

Set in Santiago, Chile in 1973 when General Augusto Pinochet's military coup seized power from President Salvador Allende's democratically elected socialist government. The film follows the unexpected friendship of two 11-year-old boys who meet when an idealistic priest, Father McEnroe, begins a trial of social integration by admitting children from poor families to an elite private school. As the two boys learn about each other's very different worlds, a strong bond develops between them.

Gonzalo Infante is a shy and quiet boy from a privileged, middle class family living in a comfortable, bourgeois neighbourhood where his security is unquestioned, even though he is aware of his mother María's long-standing affair with a wealthy Argentinean businessman. Pedro Machuca comes from a poverty-stricken low class family in a nearby illegal shantytown, insanitary and overcrowded, where people live without even hope for a better future. The inclusion of the marginal students causes unrest at the school. Fights break out between boys of the two economic classes and parents call a meeting to voice their opposition to the "communist" priest. During one of these scuffles, Gonzalo protects Pedro from the bullies, suffering the most injury as a result, and later he visits Pedro in his home.

Gonzalo accepts his status without feeling superior and is willing to share his personal possessions without question, though Pedro's family continue to refer to him as "the snob". Pedro's seductive young cousin Silvana introduces both boys to her feminine charms which serves only to strengthen the bond for the innocent and impressionable Gonzalo. Together they attend political rallies in order to make a little money, selling Chilean flags to both the Nationalists and the Communists. But as emotions begin to escalate and street fights break out between far-left and far-right militants, the political unrest inexorably encroaches into their lives and the boys' friendship is shaken to the core.

This outstanding, semi-autobiographical and vividly realised drama was the first Chilean film to deal with this tumultuous time in the country's history.

The House of the Spirits

A film by Bille August, based on the novel by Isabel Allende.

The story, set in a mythical South American country that could well be the author's native Chile, begins in the 1920s. Rosa and her younger sister Clara are the daughters of the wealthy, influencial and liberal del Valle family. Esteban Trueba is an impoverished young man in love with Rosa who vows to make his fortune in order to marry her and provide her with the comforts to which she is accustomed. However, whilst he is successful in gold mining, Rosa dies before they are able to marry, after drinking poisoned wine intended for her liberal party father. Broken hearted, Esteban leaves with his fortune to buy an estancia, where he sternly rules with an iron fist over the peasants who work the land for him and who call him "Patron". As their master, he takes all he wants from them, even the women, with the result that a bastard son is born whom he does not acknowledge but who is named after him.

Esteban has a spinster sister, Férula, who, for the past twenty years, has lived a sad and loveless existence in the city, caring for their ailing mother. When their mother dies, Esteban, now a bitter and lonely man, returns to the city from his estancia to attend the funeral. There he notices Clara who is now grown up, and not wasting a moment, he goes to her home. Clara, luminous and mystical, already knows that he is there to ask for her hand in marriage and happily accepts, having loved him ever since she first saw him as a child, when he was courting her sister Rosa.

After their marriage, Clara lovingly embraces his sister, Férula, into the bosom of her household when they move to Esteban's estancia. Férula blossoms from a bitter old maid into a companionable and pleasant woman under Clara's warmth and affection. Esteban and Clara eventually have a child, Blanca, who grows up playing with Pedro, the son of the estancia's indigenous indian foreman. When Esteban discovers this, he sends Blanca away to boarding school, not wishing his daughter to fraternise with the peasants.

Clara, loving and pure of heart, is Esteban's exact opposite. When their daughter finally grows up and returns home from school, she knows that the independent Blanca has fallen in love with her childhood playmate, Pedro. Esteban hates Pedro, a free-thinking liberal who is inciting the peasants to unionize and demand their rights, whipping them into a frenzy against the "Patron" – or so Esteban sees it – and he drives Pedro off his land. He also banishes Férula from his house, believing her to have unnatural feelings for his wife, Clara. Possessive to a fault, he is consumed by jealousy. Clara, unable to sustain Esteban's cruelties any longer, finally leaves him, taking Blanca with her to the del Valle family home in the city.

Blanca, who is pregnant by Pedro, gives birth to their daughter, Alba, whilst believing him to have been killed by her father. Esteban, representing the wealthy, becomes a conservative senator, reigning for years until the liberals finally win power, a tenure that is short-lived however, as a military coup sets up a reign of terror. Meanwhile, Blanca discovers that Pedro is alive, and they joyously meet again. When Blanca is picked up as a political dissident and tortured for her political views, Esteban, old and broken, has little real influence left to help her. Too late, he tries to right some wrongs. Near the end of his life, he returns to his estancia, accompanied by Blanca, to finally find redemption and forgiveness.

A rich and vibrant tapestry, this multi-generational epic deals with human nature and the complex emotions, forces and events that shape it. It is the story of a family struggling to find its place in an ever-changing world, and of individuals trying to do so within their family.