Best Chilean drama movies

La Esmeralda 1879 (2010)

Revolves around the naval Battle of Iquique between the Peruvian ironclad monitor 'Huáscar' and the Chilean wooden corvette 'Esmeralda'.

The Club (2015)

In a secluded house in a small seaside town live four unrelated men and the woman who tends to the house and their needs. All former priests, they have been sent to this quiet exile to purge the sins of their pasts, the separation from their communities the worst form of punishment by the Church. They keep to a strict daily schedule devoid of all temptation and spontaneity, each moment a deliberate effort to atone for their wrongdoings.

Almost Transparent Blue (2018)

On a bachelor party, Lucas, a withdrawn and shy man, evoques the last memory of his first love

Gloria Bell (2019)

Gloria is a free-spirited divorcée who spends her days at a straight-laced office job and her nights on the dance floor, joyfully letting loose at clubs around Los Angeles. After meeting Arnold on a night out, she finds herself thrust into an unexpected new romance, filled with both the joys of budding love and the complications of dating, identity, and family.

No (2012)

In 1988, Chilean military dictator Augusto Pinochet, due to international pressure, is forced to call a plebiscite on his presidency. The country will vote ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ to Pinochet extending his rule for another eight years. Opposition leaders for the ‘No’ vote persuade a brash young advertising executive, René Saavedra, to spearhead their campaign. Against all odds, with scant resources and while under scrutiny by the despot’s minions, Saavedra and his team devise an audacious plan to win the election and set Chile free.

A Fantastic Woman (2017)

Marina's life is thrown into turmoil following the death of her partner. Mourning the loss of the man she loved, she finds herself under intense scrutiny from those with no regard for her privacy.

Rodriguez: Son of Rebellion (2007)

At the dawn of the 19th century, a whole generation of extraordinary men fights to get rid of the Spanish yoke and turn Chile into an independent nation. Among these brave men a legendary figure rose: Manuel Rodríguez. Passionate and brilliant, the lawyer Rodríguez became the attorney of the local authority, deputy, minister for several government departments and supreme director by popular acclaim. However, he wasn't as successful in any of his official positions as he was in his role as a spy and guerrilla commander, leading the resistance against the enemy.

The Dance of Reality (2013)

“Having broken away from my illusory self, I was desperately seeking a path and a meaning to life.” This phrase perfectly sums up Alejandro Jodorowsky’s biographical project: reconstituting the incredible adventure of his life. Alejandro Jodorowsky was born in 1929 in Tocopilla, a coastal town on edge of the Chilean desert, where this film was shot. It was there where he discovered the fundamentals of reality, as he underwent an unhappy and alienated childhood as part of an uprooted family.

O'Higgins: Live To Earn His Name (2007)

Héroes: O'Higgins is part of a Chilean television film series produced by Channel 13 that is one of most ambitious projects intended to commemorate historical events that culminated with the Chilean independence.

The Strong Ones (2020)

Lucas travels to visit his sister to a remote town in southern Chile. In front of the ocean and the fog, he meets Antonio, a boatswain in a local fishing boat. When an intense romance grows between them, their strength, their independence and their adulthood become immovable in front of the tide.

Endless Poetry (2016)

A portrait of Alejandro Jodorowsky’s young adulthood, set in the 1940s and 50s, in the electric capital city of Santiago. There, he decides to become a poet and is introduced, by destiny, into the foremost bohemian and artistic circle of the time.

In the Grayscale (2015)

Bruno is an architect who has a perfect life: A nice family and a good job. Anyway, Bruno has a deep sense of unease. He decides to leave his wife to be alone and have time to find him self. A business man offers him to build an iconic landmark in Santiago city. Motivated by this professional challenge, Bruno feels he can find a twist in his life by a vocational route. He start working with a young history teacher named Fer who is agile, energetic, captivating and gay. Starts between them an unexpected and intense romance. At this point he must decide his path. The biggest learning: simplicity is the best way to get up again.

Ema (2019)

Ema is a magnetic and impulsive dancer in a reggaeton troupe. Her toxic marriage to choreographer Gastón is beyond repair, following a decision to give up on their adopted child Polo. She sets out on a mission to get him back, not caring who she’ll need to fight, seduce or destroy to make it happen.

Allende in His Maze (2014)

The last 7 hours of former President of Chile Salvador Allende, and his closest collaborators inside the Palace of La Moneda, during the brutal military coup d'etat on Sept. 11, 1973, the day democracy in Chile ended. Based on true events.

Neruda (2016)

It’s 1948 and the Cold War has arrived in Chile. In the Congress, prominent Communist Senator and popular poet Pablo Neruda accuses the government of betraying the Party and is stripped of his parliamentary immunity by President González Videla. The Chief of Investigative Police instructs inspector Óscar Peluchonneau to arrest the poet. Neruda tries to escape from the country with his wife, the painter Delia del Carril, but they are forced to go underground.

Trauma (2017)

Four friends visit a rural locality of Chile, are brutally attacked by a man and his son. After not finding help in the town, they decide to confront these men with the help of a pair of policemen. But in this way, they will discover that their attackers have in their blood the direct legacy of the darkest period of Chilean history and will have to face the most brutal enemy.

The Silence of Marcos Tremmer (2024)

Marcos Tremmer is a successful publicist who lives in Madrid, madly in love with his wife, Lucía. One day, Marcos discovers that a deadly disease will end his life in a few months.

Pacto de Fuga (2020)

During the last years of Pinochet's military regime, a group of militants from the "Manuel Rodríguez Patriotic Front" plan a prison break of political prisoners, through a tunnel that will take them 18 months to dig.

The Island (2014)

A group of people gather for a family reunion in a house on an isolated island. They are waiting for the last person to join them, but as the evening arrives and he doesn’t arrive, 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.

Rey (2017)

In the nineteenth century, a French adventurer sets off to establish a kingdom in the inhospitable South of Chile, uniting the feared Mapuche under him. The response of the Chilean army is devastating.

The Life of Fish (2010)

At a house party, a handsome man wanders around catching up with friends he has not seen for some years. A travel writer now based in Berlin, Andre appears to be living an exciting international life, and yet... something has drawn him back home to Santiago. As the night goes on, we realize that a tragedy binds this group - an event that was also the impetus for Andre's departure from Chile years ago. Moreover, there is someone at the party he goes to great lengths to avoid. But she is the very person he most needs to see.

Visceral: Between the Ropes of Madness (2012)

A ruthless murderer is dedicated on raping and killing without any regrets. But... what is the reason for this behavior? Behind this tormented man lies an even more turbulent past than his current life.

Love Torn in a Dream (2000)

A serious young man of free spirit is forced by his surroundings to become rich at all costs. A group of blind children tries to open the eyes of the unbelievers to the Christian faith. Retired nuns who open a brothel, to pay the running costs of the convent. These rather ironic paradoxes turn this fairytale into a philosophical fable.

Nobody Knows I'm Here (2020)

Memo lives on a remote Chilean sheep farm, hiding a beautiful singing voice from the outside world. A recluse with a glittery flair, he can't stop dwelling on the past, but what will happen once someone finally listens?

Cola de mono (2018)

It's Christmas Eve, 1986, and Borja is a precocious teenager with a passion for film. As his family comes together to celebrate the holiday, the combined forces of the suffocating Chilean heat, free-flowing drinks, and repressed desire contribute to the eruption of long-held secrets. Both an enticing family melodrama and an explicit erotic thriller, this is a story about the ways that passion and desire control our lives—from pop-culture tastes to sexual fantasies.

Burning Patience (2022)

Mario is a young fisherman who dreams of becoming a poet. He gets a job as the postman to Pablo Neruda when the legendary writer moves there after being exiled from Chile.

El niño rojo (2014)

Take a Spin in the Air (2020)

A school boy who excels in math but loves art; a fetishistic businessman; and a compulsive car cleaner whose hobby is to write plays, are attracted, as a siren song, to a large house made into a cultural center. There, a woman, who seems to be a fortune-teller, urges them to look for a centennial tree planted over an ancient indigenous ceremonials site.

Jackal of Nahueltoro (1970)

Based on an actual murder case that ignited a furious debate over the death penalty in Chile in 1960, this experimental social drama portrays the life and death of an illiterate peasant who, while drunk, murdered the woman with whom he had a relationship and her five children.

La promesa del retorno (2020)

An unhappy art student feels deeply disturbed and is unable to sleep. One morning, she hears the trumpeting of an eagle that seems to herald unusual times, which is further materialized with the finding of a copy of The inmaculate conception, the book by Paul Eluard and André Breton, in her apartment's incinerator.