My Imaginary Country
ABOUT
Master documentarian Patricio Guzmán (The Battle of Chile) captures the long-awaited revolution set off by protests in 2019 in his native Chile. With harrowing front-line protest footage and interviews with the dynamic activists who are leading a regime change, this urgent chronicle powerfully connects the country’s complex, bloody history to contemporary social movements and offers hope for the future.
Patricio Guzmán was born in 1941 in Santiago, Chile. He has dedicated his career to documentary cinema. His films have screened widely and received international recognition. Guzmán studied at the Official School of Cinematographic Art in Madrid. From 1972 to 1979, he directed 'The Battle of Chile: Part I-III,' a five-hour trilogy about Salvador Allende’s government and its fall to General Pinochet in a deadly miliary coup. Named one of the 10 bestpolitical films in the world by Cineaste, this film is the foundation of Guzmán's cinema. After Pinochet took power, Patricio Guzmán was arrested and imprisoned at the National Stadium, where he was subjected repeatedly to simulated executions. In 1973, he left Chile and moved to Cuba, then to Spain, and then France, but remained very attached to his country and its history. Guzmán is the president of the International Documentary Festival in Santiago, Chile (FIDOCS), which he founded in 1997. 'The Cordillera of Dreams' (Cannes 2019) closed a trilogy which began with 'Nostalgia for the Light' (Cannes 2010) and 'The Pearl Button' (Berlin 2015). His latest film is 'My Imaginary Country.'