Nuevo Cine Chileno in 10 films

After years of silence under Pinochet, Chilean directors began to look at the past and present with new freedom. These ten films go from the precursors of the 1960s and 70s to the Oscar-winning work of recent years.

1
Three Sad Tigers 1968Raúl Ruiz · IMDb 6.9Ruiz's first feature is a loose, strange portrait of drifting people in Santiago. It shows the playful, experimental side of Chilean cinema before the dictatorship.
Next: The Jackal of Nahueltoro
Ruiz's dreamlike experiment gives way to Littín's direct realism, a true story told with a social anger.
2
The Jackal of Nahueltoro 1969Miguel Littín · IMDb 7.6Littín reconstructs the true story of a poor rural man who commits a terrible crime and is then taught to read in prison. A landmark of political, humane Chilean film.
Next: The Battle of Chile (1975)
Fiction gives way to documentary as Guzmán films Allende's government falling apart in the streets and factories.
3
The Battle of Chile (1975) 1975Patricio Guzmán · IMDb 8.1Guzmán and his crew filmed the last months of Allende's government as they happened. This first part is the great document of the period that the later films keep returning to.
Next: Machuca
Thirty years later the same year returns as fiction: Wood sees the coup through two schoolboys, and the new generation begins to look back.
4
Machuca 2004Andrés Wood · IMDb 7.7Two boys from opposite classes become friends in Santiago in 1973. Wood brings the coup down to a child's view, and the film opened the way for fiction about the period.
Next: Tony Manero
Larraín takes a darker path, replacing Wood's tenderness with a cold study of a killer in the dictatorship's middle years.
5
Tony Manero 2008Pablo Larraín · IMDb 6.8In 1978 Santiago a man is obsessed with the hero of Saturday Night Fever. Larraín's cold, disturbing film shows the dictatorship through one empty and violent life.
Next: The Maid
The dictatorship fades into the background and class takes the foreground, in a small-scale domestic drama filled with dark humour.
6
The Maid 2009Sebastián Silva · IMDb 7.3A live-in maid who has served one family for years starts to fear anyone who comes to help her. Silva's black comedy turns the class divide inside a Chilean home into a thriller.
Next: Nostalgia for the Light
From a house in Santiago the view widens to the whole desert, as Guzmán joins the cosmos and the search for the disappeared.
7
Nostalgia for the Light 2010Patricio Guzmán · IMDb 7.6In the Atacama desert astronomers look at the past in the sky while women search the ground for the remains of the disappeared. Guzmán's finest essay on memory.
Next: No
Back to Larraín, who now gives the memory of the dictatorship a wide, public subject: the vote that ended it.
8
No 2012Pablo Larraín · IMDb 7.4Larraín tells the 1988 referendum campaign against Pinochet from the side of the advertising men who made it. He shot it on period video, so it looks like the time.
Next: Gloria (2013)
Politics steps back as Lelio makes an intimate film about one woman's life today, with a lighter, more personal touch.
9
Gloria (2013) 2013Sebastián Lelio · IMDb 6.9A divorced woman in her fifties goes out dancing and looks for love in Santiago. Lelio moves Chilean cinema from the past to the present, with a warm and funny portrait.
Next: A Fantastic Woman
Lelio goes further on the same ground, moving from a woman's loneliness to identity and prejudice, and reaching an international audience.
10
A Fantastic Woman 2017Sebastián Lelio · IMDb 7.1After her partner dies, a young trans woman is treated with suspicion by his family and the police. Lelio's film brought Chile its first Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film.