Take Pablo Larraín, arguably Chile’s most famous director. Instead of making a standard war film about the coup, he made Tony Manero (2008)—a claustrophobic portrait of a sociopath obsessed with John Travolta in 1978 Santiago. It’s not about politics on the surface, but the air of paranoia and moral rot is suffocating. Larraín followed this up with the masterpiece No (2012), starring Gael García Bernal as an ad man who uses pop culture to defeat a dictator in a referendum. It’s a true story, and it proves that sometimes, a rainbow logo is more powerful than a gun.
: Directores como Patricio Guzmán y Raúl Ruiz continuaron su labor fuera de Chile. Guzmán inició su monumental trilogía documental La batalla de Chile , registrando el colapso de la democracia chilena desde una perspectiva militante.