Machuca

Set in Chile in 1973, during the final days of President Allende’s life and leading up to Augusto Pinochet’s bloody coup, director Andrés Wood’s second feature is an astonishingly intimate and vividly painful coming-of-age story. Machuca follows two 12-year-old boys from opposite ends of society who forge an unlikely bond amid turbulent political times. Wood’s film was a blockbuster in its native Chile and sparked a renewal of public conversation about the Pinochet dictatorship, a topic which had been long pushed to the margins of mainstream discourse. Two decades later, Machuca remains as timely and poignant as ever.