Best Chilean documentary movies

When a daughter becomes concerned about her mother's well-being in a retirement home, private investigator Romulo hires Sergio, an 83-year-old man who becomes a new resident—and a mole inside the home, who struggles to balance his assignment with becoming increasingly involved in the lives of several residents.

Augusto and Paulina have been together for 25 years. Eight years ago, he was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease. Both fear the day he no longer recognizes her.

In Chile's Atacama Desert, astronomers peer deep into the cosmos in search for answers concerning the origins of life. Nearby, a group of women sift through the sand searching for body parts of loved ones, dumped unceremoniously by Pinochet's regime.

The ocean contains the history of all humanity. The sea holds all the voices of the earth and those that come from outer space. Water receives impetus from the stars and transmits it to living creatures. Water, the longest border in Chile, also holds the secret of two mysterious buttons which were found on its ocean floor. Chile, with its 2,670 miles of coastline and the largest archipelago in the world, presents a supernatural landscape. In it are volcanoes, mountains and glaciers. In it are the voices of the Patagonian Indigenous people, the first English sailors and also those of its political prisoners. Some say that water has memory. This film shows that it also has a voice.

Almost 10 years after being charged with a heinous crime, former members of a Chilean cult share their haunting experiences.

The chronicle of the political tension in Chile in 1973 and of the violent counter revolution against the democratically elected government of Salvador Allende.

Chronicles the events immediately surrounding the CIA- supported coup itself.

After the coup d'État of the Democratic government of Allende, the embassy of Italy in Santiago played a major role in helping the opposers of the regime, and extradited many of them to Italy.

"In Chile, when the sun rises, it had to climb hills, walls and tops before reaching the last stone of the Cordillera. In my country, the Cordillera is everywhere. But for the Chilean citizens, it is an unknown territory. After going North for Nostalgia for the Light and South for The Pearl Button, I now feel ready to shoot this immense spine to explore its mysteries, powerful revelations of Chile’s past and present history." Patricio Guzmán

Chola and Fútbol are a couple of street dogs that live in the Los Reyes skatepark. A microcosm is organized around them, composed of things, animals and young adolescents in conflict with an adult world that they reject but are required to enter.

The life and experiences of six emblematic Chilean actors. One by one, they relate aspects of their trajectories, origin and dreams, reliving and analyzing not only their careers, but also happy and historical moments that marked their lives.

Tells the story of a group of Chilean children who discover a larger reality and a different world through the cinema. Each Saturday, Alicia Vega transforms the chapel of Lo Hermida into a film screening room as she conducts a workshop for children under the auspices of the Catholic church. The hundred or so children involved had never seen a movie, and in the workshop they see and learn about the cinema: photograms and moving images, projection, camera angles and movement, film genres, and much more. And they watch movies: Chaplin, Disney, Lamorisse's 'The Red Balloon,' the Lumieres' 'The Arrival of the Train to the Station.' Finally, each child designs his own film with drawings. And then, for the first time in most of their lives, the children got to the movies in downtown Santiago.

The small town of San Carlos suffers an atrocious injustice: the neighboring city of Chillán snatches from them the prize for the "Best Longaniza in Chile". Faced with this blatant theft, a group of people from San Carlos organizes a powerful social movement, which aims to obtain the precious "Denomination of Origin" for their longaniza sausages, and thus repair the damage and recover the dignity of their beloved town.

A collective narrative about the origins of the New Chilean Song movement, beginning with Violeta Parra, the emblematic groups, the influence of Víctor Jara, and their intersections with other musical styles. This is the story of the musical epic of the generation that had a profound impact on the triumph of the Popular Unity alongside Salvador Allende.

Unarchiving a territory. On the verge of disappearing due to industrial extractivism, we begin to glimpse what still subsists in the forest of Hornopirén, in the south of Chile. Not only do we observe it, but it also looks back at us.

A humble farmer and gambler from southern Chile becomes the winner of the country's largest lottery. His joy turns into anguish when he finds the winning ticket completely ruined. Alongside his family and friends, he embarks on an exciting odyssey to reclaim the prize.

More than sixty years after leaving high school, former classmates Alicia, Gema, Angelica, Ximena and Maria Teresa are still devoted to their regular catch-ups in which they exchange gossip and reminiscences over elaborately presented afternoon teas. Impeccably turned out, the ladies’ free-wheeling tea-time chats run the gamut from mortality and marital infidelity to soccer and twerking.

Jean, a Haitian immigrant in Chile, is admired everywhere he performs. Moreover, his body represents all the classic values of academy. However, in the anonymity of his existence, he is also a canon of marginality.

Santiago de Chile, 1994: financed by mysterious textile entrepreneurs, the rock band Lucybell enters the Sonus Studios to record their first album, by the hand of the famous Argentine producer Mario Breuer. The budget is enough for only eight days. Santiago de Chile, 2017: after being disappeared for twenty-three years, the videotapes with the chronicle of those eight days come to light. This was the creation of Peces, one of the most important Chilean records of the '90s.

Los Jaivas take a symbolic train to celebrate their 60 years of musical life. A choral story where the protagonists narrate the intimacy in this journey of commemorations and obligatory stops throughout Chile connecting it with their music. The band together with other authorized voices reflect on the free and democratic circulation of Chilean cultural heritage, closing the year's tour with the realization of the mural in Cal y Canto station of the Stgo subway by René Olivares and the great final show at the Quinta Vergara in Viña Del Mar.

Daniel Osorio will face his ghosts through the search of his only true love, the woman who left him because he was not able to settle down.

The life of Rosita Serrano, the "Chilean nightingale" who entertained the Nazis when she was living in Berlin 1937-1943. In 1943 while on tour in Sweden, Serrano was accused by Germany of being a spy—she had donated a benefit performance to Jewish refugees. Rather than returning to Germany to be arrested, she traveled to Chile.

Los Jaivas are the most important rock band in the history of Chile. 55 years of music and friendship. Memories emerge note by note, song after song, tour after tour. An intimate portrait of their musical life where for the first time they share their archives that have been accumulated for years on the shelves of a small apartment in Santiago.

The economists behind the implementation of the most extreme capitalist system in the world observe with surprise the discontent of its countrymen. For the first time, they tell the story of how they became Milton Friedman's students in Chicago in the 1950s and what were they willing to do to pursue their extreme economic ideas, aided by Pinochet's dictatorship in the 70s. Unseen images and testimonies that allow us to understand the historic process that transformed the Chilean people and Chile in the country that it is today, an image of success and discontent.

Artist and singer Mon Laferte recounts intimate moments of her life as she navigates a world tour, motherhood, and her deepest wounds.

A film about the fearless photographers and photojournalists who documented strikes, demonstrations, protests etc during the Chilean military regime of Augusto Pinochet, sometimes risking their very lives.

Musician Alain Johannes travels to Chile to take refuge from pain after his partner Natasha dies. Influential rockers tell this story of love and musical inspiration.

A look at the renowned writer Roberto Bolaño, and the turmoil caused by his strange relationship with Chile, his homeland. We approach the writer through his friends, his irony and his genius, traveling across Mexico, Spain and Chile.

Day after day, an elderly woman recalls the Spanish Basque country of her youth — while forgetting she is consigned to a retirement home in Chile.

In the Aysén region dwell a population of 90000 isolated souls sharing the harsh landscapes of an area about the size of England. Here where beauty seems to be on first-name terms with fear and danger,in a place where the immensity of nature can never be dominated, the setting hesitates, along the expanses, between sparkling colours and the black and white of the snow and the water. The day-to-day images intermingle with a story of mythological aspect; that of the timeless quest for the Lost City of the Caesars, a city of gold built 500 years ago by the conquerors.

Dimas and Isabel lived in Arica when new border limits were imposed between Peru and Chile, dividing their descendants. Their great-granddaughter searches for her identity, crossing the limits of her memory, family chronicles and official discourses that shape the history of both countries.

Pedro Lemebel, the writer and visual artist, defeated a marginal childhood to become one of the first to shake up Chile’s conservative society during Pinochet’s dictatorship. Dressed in feather boas, stilettos and a sharp tongue, he staged revolutionary performances that defied the era’s terror, he said what no one wanted to hear in a homophobic, repressed and militarized country.

Lissette's favorite aunt Adriana, who lives in Australia, is arrested in 2007 while visiting her family in Chile and accused of having worked for dictator Pinochet's notorious secret police, the DINA, and of having participated in the commission of state crimes. When Adriana denies these accusations, Lissette begins to investigate her story in order to film a documentary about her.

A humble farmer and gambler from southern Chile becomes the winner of the country's largest lottery. His joy turns into anguish when he finds the winning ticket completely ruined. Alongside his family and friends, he embarks on an exciting odyssey to reclaim the prize.

In a juvenile detention centre in Chile. At night, young people are seized by nightmares as they wait to be prosecuted. An exploration of the relationship between their lives, crimes, and nightmares.

Chile, 1984. As a wave of UFO sightings — and a military dictatorship — sweep the country, a group of short-wave radio operators receive mysterious communications from a nearby island. Through the crackling voices, they learn that a highly developed extraterrestrial race has taken residence on Friendship Island and is offering the listeners the promise of a better world.

Hija de Perra was a transvestite artist who would become an icon of dissidence and a benchmark for Latin American underground, after she died in 2014. Multiple intimate and unpublished audiovisual footage, captured by her filmmaker best friend, reveal how this character came about. She experimented in music and film, wrote texts for the academy, and turned his cross-dressing into a political action, questioning gender and sexual identity.

A moving ode to the director's five-year-old son against the expressionistic imagery of his active life

A group of friends with Down Syndrome have been attending the same school for 40 years, and they are tired of being treated like children, they are grown-ups and want to live as such.

Gathered by a theater company, a small town in Chile called Villa Alegre, looks deep into its origins and myths to tell their own history through a play.

Niña Hermosa is the story of a place—the edge of a road— that links a family tragedy, religious culture, infrastructural change, and erasure. This film, almost entirely visual, observes the past four years of an animita (shrines memorializing devastating deaths) dedicated to a young woman who is now considered miraculous.⁠

On October 9, 2024, the Chilean rock band Los Bunkers performs the first MTV Unplugged recorded in Chilean territory, in the studios of Chilevisión. Becoming the third Chilean band to perform an MTV Unplugged.

An account of the experiences by poet and National Literature Award laureate Raúl Zurita, during his travels and his daily life, as he reflects on topics such as state terrorism and death

Journalistic investigation that exposes unknown details of the air mission that bombed the Chilean presidential house of La Moneda in 1973.

A photograph of an unknown Mapuche great-grandmother is the starting point of this documentary essay. Through the analysis of said picture, conversations with family members, a trip to southern Chile cities, and an actress who re-enacts the photo, we see the existing prejudice against indigenous people.

Documentary that portrays the last year of operation of the old Valparaíso prison, closed in April 1999.

In the form of a filmed epistolary conversation, two young, experienced filmmakers discuss film, present and past family, heritage and maternity. The personal and profound reflections—which are embodied in the graceful images taken day-to-day—are suddenly echoed by the political emergency of a country.

Matapaco is an icon and symbol of fight for many students. He walks the streets leading the protests for free education in Santiago. A look at the life of the dog and his remarkable influence on people.

Documentary inspired in the life and work of Chilean musician and engineer José Vicente Asuar, worldly known for his work in developing electroacoustic music, being the creator of the first musical computer in Latin America, today abandoned in a country house outside the city. The reunion of Asuar with this artifact creates a lost story that reveals the history of a essential character of our sounding biography.

José Balmes is the Chilean and Spanish artist who has made his work a renewing testimony of his own history and the society around him.

Mauricio, a lifeguard on a Chilean beach, considers himself to be a model of efficiency and professionalism. His colleagues, however, think otherwise, and speculate on why he never goes into the water. Maite Alberdi's visually gorgeous feature documentary debut has the intensity of a short story; beginning as a quirky character study of lifeguards and beachgoers, it becomes something altogether darker and more shocking when events take a dramatic turn.

In 2010, 81 inmates died in a huge fire at San Miguel prison in Chile’s capital city Santiago. Inside, they were trapped behind bars like rats; outside, dozens of family members waiting for visiting hours to begin looked on helplessly as their loved ones shouted for help. The doors remained locked. This reconstruction sheds light on the utter failure of the prison’s administration, which was housing twice as many prisoners as permitted.

Exposé of the CIA-financed efforts of the Edwards family of Chile to cover up the human rights abuses of the Pinochet dictatorship through its newspaper 'El Mercurio'.

Marcia, granddaughter of Salvador Allende, the first democratic socialist president who was overthrown by the Army in September 1973, seeks to reconstruct the personal and familiar image of her grandfather, buried by his historical person, her exile and the family pain.

In 2019, millions of Chileans rose up in a popular revolt that resulted in radical change: the call for an assembly that will change the constitution imposed by the Pinochet dictatorship and its economic neoliberal model, referred to as ‘The Brick’. This change is seen through the eyes of two Chileans from opposing sides of the political spectrum. They experience a year of turmoil as protests give way to transformation. On the one side Ramiro, a wealthy businessman, and on the other side Mariana, a lower middle-class teacher. Historical conflicts that were long thought resolved come to light as the assembly process draws closer, showing how the wounds of a brutal dictatorship are deep, lasting and must be reconciled at all costs.

In a country at the world's end, the highest authority of the Catholic Church lands. The Pope comes to bring the word of God, but Chile awaits him with the most important religious crisis in its history.

Documentary film about soccer and the passion it unleashes in a country qualifying for a world cup. During eight years of following the Chilean national team, the features and nuances that make up our society are reflected in both defeat and victory, trying to answer what mystery this sport has that makes it the most popular in the world.

Paco and Manolo are two Catalan photographers from the outskirts of Barcelona who have been working together for thirty years as if they were a single person, capturing their images in Kink magazine, a very personal photography fanzine with a homoerotic aesthetic of Mediterranean essence.

Follows Chilean artist Alfredo Jaar as he finds his artistic voice and develops the socially critical perspective of his work.

On December 10th, 2006, General Pinochet dies unexpectedly at Santiago's Military Hospital. His decease triggers a 24 hours revival of political divisions that marked with violence and death Chilean recent history. With high quality original footage and testimonies of four characters that deeply experienced a journey of strong contrasts and surrealistic nuances, the film narrates in an innovative, exciting way the ending of a key chapter in Chilean history.

Looking for extras and locations, a filmmaker settles on Chiloé, the second largest island off the coast of Chile. He does auditions, but mainly listens patiently to the stories of young and old people. As an outsider, he cautiously searches for the soul of the community and its underlying tensions.

Agüero is able to look at the scene in all it's complexity around architectonical brutality that Santiago de Chile underwent around the year 2000.

Just like in 1985, today Ignacio Agüero is back interrupting filmmakers during shooting, but not to ask what he did thirty years ago, but to find out what is purely cinematographic in what they film. These conversations are related to images in the director's personal archive, as if what is truly cinematographic was found among bits that were never made for the screen.

No Place in Anywhere can deal with many issues. It is a personal journey through image and time. It is the portrait of the "La Matriz" neighborhood in Valparaíso. It is the encounter between reality and fiction. It is the constant search to find a truth within the documentary. It is a musical rehearsal. It is the constant preparation of a documentary. It is a documentary of questions more than answers. A silent face, an empty road, a winter landscape, the wind moving the leaves of a tree, a wall, the sea, the street of a neighborhood, all of them intend to "create through the record" a unique truth for each viewer.

In September 1973, 19 paper mill workers were imprisoned and taken to the Laja police station. Six years later, their bodies were found in Yumbel’s cemetery. After almost 40 years, one of the policemen involved broke the pact of silence they had made the night of the killing, revealing the participation of the Paper Manufacturing Company (CMPC) in the murder. Today, the case is still open and awaiting sentence.

Somewhere at the end of the world, where ocean and rocks play their endless games of hide and seek, lives a man. In his mysterious solitude, he is not alone. One day, remains of a white whale are washed by a storm on a beach. In this stranded portrait inspired by H. Melville’s masterpiece Moby Dick the director questions our inner reality and our own gaze on it.