My Imaginary Country

Rousing documentary from legendary Chilean filmmaker Patricio Guzmán that finds inspiring optimism in the recent wave of youthful protests against his home nation’s corrupt governmental systems

Words: Ben Nicholson

Across 2019 and 2020, Chile saw a number of enormous demonstrations and swathes of civil unrest known as Estallido Social, or the ‘social outburst’. An explosive reaction to a growing sense of inequality and injustice, the protest movement eventually saw a national referendum in which an overwhelming majority voted to rewrite the constitution. In amongst all of this was Patricio Guzmán, a filmmaker who has spent decades producing incredible documentaries about his country and its cultural and political landscape. Now in his 80s, Guzmán has turned his camera on the younger generation railing against a corrupt system in his powerful new film My Imaginary Country

For those familiar with Guzmán primarily through his recent extraordinary trilogy of essay films – Nostalgia for the Light (2010), The Pearl Button (2015) and The Cordillera of Dreams (2019) – this new film might feel quite different. My Imaginary Country tackles the state of contemporary Chile in a more immediate documentary style. It includes a wealth of gripping on-the-ground footage that recalls other recent protest films like Jehane Noujaim’s The Square (2013) and Sergei Loznitsa’s Maidan (2014). Guzmán combines this powerful material with talking heads of various people, all of them women, commenting on the situation either from a position of direct involvement or offering broader context.

Although he allows their words space to define the film’s account, his own first-person narration draws their interviews together and links back to the violent legacy of the Chilean past that he has brought to attention before. There could hardly be a person better placed than Guzmán to portray – and be swept up in – the hopeful energy of a new generation and to take audiences along for the ride. Guzmán is one of the great political filmmakers of our time and this documentary will be a rousing experience on the big screen.

My Imaginary Country is released 9 Jun by New Wave

Director: Patricio Guzmán

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