chilean films – ALLIANCE OF WOMEN FILM JOURNALISTS

SUMMER WAR (Tribeca 2026) – Review by Valerie Kalfrin

June 11, 2026June 15, 2026 Valerie Kalfrin Alicia Scherson, chilean films, Dan Beirne, David Gaete, Lux Pascal, Roberto Bolaño, summer war, Tribeca 2026

A board game champion sinks deeper into his obsession while on vacation at a Chilean seaside resort in Summer War, director Alicia Scherson’s second adaptation of a book by Chilean author Roberto Bolaño. Summer War has the laid-back feel of a summer vacation at first, with warm cinematography from Alejo Maglio and deliberate pacing. Unfortunately, there’s a less-than-compelling protagonist, one of those insufferable American tourists myopic about his own behavior and the politics of the nation he’s visiting. While that might have been Bolaño’s point, it doesn’t make for a riveting watch.

Reviews

THE MYSTERIOUS GAZE OF THE FLAMINGO – Review by Diane Carson

January 1, 2026January 4, 2026 Diane Carson Angello Faccini, chilean films, Diego Céspedes, lbgtq+, Matías Catalán, Paula Dinamarca, Pedro Muñoz, The Mysterious Gaze of the Flamingo, Un Certain Regard Award

In the intriguingly titled The Mysterious Gaze of the Flamingo, Chilean writer/director Diego Céspedes’ debut feature profiles an isolated drag queen community living in a 1982 remote mining town. Amusing and dramatic, the story presents a serious, metaphorical commentary on a tragic misunderstanding of the AIDS epidemic. For nearby minors believe that as one man falls in love with another a mere gaze causes the illness, compromising the many mutual emotional and sexual attractions.

Reviews

THE MYSTERIOUS GAZE OF THE FLAMINGO – Review by April Neale

December 5, 2025 April Neale Atacama Desert, chilean films, Diego Céspedes, lgbtq, Oscar submission, The Mysterious Gaze of the Flamingo

Set in the early 1980s, when fear of a mysterious new illness spread faster than the information to explain it, Diego Céspedes’ debut feature, The Mysterious Gaze of the Flamingo, is a haunting coming-of-age story set against one of the first global waves of HIV/AIDS panic. Set deep in Chile’s Atacama Desert in 1982, the film explores what happens to a community already living on the edges of society when superstition, isolation, and fear close in. Céspedes’ debut is gentle yet devastating, tender yet unflinching. It reminds us that love is both dangerous and transformative.

Essays

NOSTALGIA FOR THE LIGHT and Chile’s Atacama Desert – Diane Carson reports

October 18, 2024October 19, 2024 Diane Carson Atacama Desert, Augusto Pinochet, chile, chilean films, documentary, nostalgia for the light, patricio guzman

Chilean writer/director Patricio Guzmán’s 2010 documentary Nostalgia for the Light provides a dramatic introduction to the Atacama Desert in northern Chile, located between the Andes Mountains and the Pacific Ocean. The film surveys astronomers interrogating origins of the cosmos, archeological evidence, and the heartbreaking unearthing of bone fragments of Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet’s murdered victims, their bodies discarded in the desert. The highest desert in the world, averaging over 8200 feet and the driest nonpolar desert in the world, Atacama all but defies description. Even having seen Nostalgia for the Light before my recent visit, nothing prepared me for the week I spent experiencing its diverse ecosystems and historical richness.

Reviews

IN HER PLACE – Review by Nadine Whitney

October 9, 2024October 13, 2024 Nadine Whitney chilean films, Elisa Zulueta, Francisca Lewin, geel murder case, maite alberdi, Marcial Tagle, Pablo Macaya, truth-based

Award-winning Chilean documentarian Maite Alberdi’s debut foray into fictional filmmaking is not a grand entrance. Rather, it is a relatively muted affair that doesn’t really know if it wants to be a mystery, a feminist awakening, or a slightly quirky ‘what if?’ story. Alberdi uses the bones of an actual murder case to examine the fictional Mercedes’ feelings of being permanently stuck. She finds herself imagining herself not as Geel, but as a woman with the perceived ‘freedoms’ she has mentally ascribed to Geel before her arrest. Mercedes doesn’t know the woman, and when she meets her, Geel is pleasant but secretive.

Reviews

EL CONDE – Review by Diane Carson

September 15, 2023September 17, 2023 Diane Carson Augusto Pinochet, chilean films, edward lachman, Gloria Münchmeyer, Jaime Vadell, netflix, pablo larrain, Paula Luchsinger, political satire, vampire

Now, on the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of Pinochet’s coup d’état against Allende, Larraín’s El Conde again targets Pinochet. However, Larraín has departed from realistic storytelling, creating a grisly, at times even repulsive, presentation of Pinochet as a jaded vampire in his late eighties. He and his enablers retrieve fresh hearts from victims, put them in blenders, and feast on ugly smoothies. Legendary cinematographer Ed Lachman captures all this in rich, deep black-and-white, the only buffer against our aversion to these loathsome individuals

Reviews

EL CONDE – Review by Nadine Whitney

September 7, 2023September 10, 2023 Nadine Whitney Augusto Pinochet, chilean films, edward lachman, Gloria Münchmeyer, Jaime Vadell, netflix, pablo larrain, Paula Luchsinger, political satire, vampire

Chilean director Pablo Larraín adds a particularly dark and absurd entry to his films influenced by the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet. While No is his lightest effort and Post Mortem his bleakest, El Conde is his most absurd. Using the premise that Pinochet is a two hundred-and fifty-year old vampire born in France in 1766 and obsessed with Marie Antoinette, August Pinochet gradually became the dictator of a “country without a king” after fighting in any war that put down the proletariat.

Reviews

THE ETERNAL MEMORY – Review by Lois Alter Mark

August 7, 2023August 7, 2023 Lois Alter Mark Alzheimer;s, Augusto Gongora, chilean films, documentaries, maite alberdi, Paulina Urrutia

In this achingly beautiful documentary, filmmaker Maite Alberdi parallels Chilean journalist Augusto Góngora’s professional success in keeping his country’s memories alive with his personal struggle to keep his own memories alive in a battle against Alzheimer’s that he cannot win. His disease is ravaging his mind much the way the Pinochet regime ravaged Chile. Thanks to Alberdi’s masterful direction, though, the film has a surprisingly light and hopeful feel.

Reviews

THE COW WHO SANG A SONG INTO THE FUTURE – Review by Alexandra Heller-Nicholas

May 11, 2023May 11, 2023 Alexandra Heller-Nicholas Alfredo Castro, chilean films, Francisca Alegria, Leonor Varela, Mia Maestro, The Cow Who Sang a Song Into the Future

If the literary works of Jorge Luis Borges, Isabel Allende and Gabriel Garcia Marquez aren’t enough to remind you how firmly the origins of magic realism lie in Latin America, then the cinema of Alfonso Arau, Guillermo del Toro and – now – Francisca Alegria collectively act to make sure you don’t forget. With The Cow Who Sang a Song Into the Future, Alegria marks her confident feature debut, crafting a tale as strange as it is memorable. Tonally the film is somber, almost at times even reverent, as it paints a complex family web and a world gone mad, where nature necessarily must suffer at the hands of progress.

Reviews

THE ETERNAL MEMORY (HotDocs2023) – Review by Liz Braun

May 11, 2023August 5, 2023 Liz Braun Augusto Gongoro, chilean films, documentaries, hotdocs2023, maite alberdi, Paulina Urrutia, the eternal memory

The Eternal Memory is a love story about journalist Augusto Gongoro and actress (and arts and culture minister) Paulina Urrutia, a Chilean couple living with his Alzheimer’s. Filmmaker Alberdi wanted to capture this couple because of the way Pauli integrated Augusto’s care into everyday life — an effort that allowed Augusto to thrive despite Alzheimer’s.

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