Documentary
“October 2019, an unexpected revolution, a social explosion. One and a half million people demonstrated in the streets of Santiago for more democracy, a more dignified life, a better education, a better health system and a new Constitution. Chile had recovered its memory. The event I had been waiting for since my student struggles in 1973 finally materialised.”
Celebrated Chilean filmmaker Patricio Guzmán, who “can fairly be described as Chile’s biographer, and also its cinematic conscience” (The New York Times) documents the country’s 2019-21 demonstrations and grassroots activism in My Imaginary Country; both a standalone film and a sequel to his previous works documenting Chile’s painful political past, including The Battle of Chile (1975-9), Salvador Allende (2004) and his trilogy Nostalgia for the Light (2010), The Pearl Button (2015) and The Cordillera of Dreams (2020).
Beginning in Santiago, the demonstrations were Chile’s biggest ever, inspiring a broad social movement that demanded justice, education, healthcare and a new constitution and in 2021, saw left-wing coalition leader Gabriel Boric elected to the premiership (at 35 years old, the country’s youngest ever president). Featuring vivid footage of the protests, and interviewing key activists on the ground, My Imaginary Country explores the birth of political hope out of mass unrest and a simmering dissatisfaction with the status quo; calling the protests a ‘second revolution’ and powerfully connecting them with the 1973 coup d’etat that saw Allende removed and the brutal oppression of Pinochet’s regime begin. An urgent and extremely moving film, it’s really joyful to hear Guzmán, long a filmmaker who’s dwelt on the tremendous pain of Chile’s past, feel an unmistakeable thrill of optimism about its future.
