Patricio Guzmán Dies: Documentarian Who Chronicled Chile’s Turbulent Modern History Was 85

Chilean documentary-maker Patricio Guzmán, whose landmark documentaries included The Battle of Chile and Cannes prize-winner The Cordillera of Dreams, died in Paris on September 15. He was 85.

Guzmán, who was born in the Chilean capital of Santiago on August 11, 1941, has been hailed as one of Latin America’s most important non-fiction directors.

His landmark works include the three-part 1975-79 The Battle of Chile: The Struggle of an Unarmed People, chronicling the final year of socialist President Salvador Allende; the 1973 coup d’état which put General Augusto Pinochet in power, and resistance in the early days of the latter’s dictatorship.

Guzmán left Chile in the 1960s to study Official Cinema School (Escuela Oficial de Cinematografía, or EOC) in Madrid. He returned home in 1971 where Allende’s government appointed him head of documentary at state cinema company Chile Films. He was chronicling the work of the socialist government when the coup broke out.

The filmmaker left the country in the wake of the coup after being arrested and detained briefly. He settled in Madrid and then Paris, only returning to Chile sporadically to film, when the political situation permitted.

Guzmán’s more recent credits include a trilogy reflecting on the legacy of his country’s 40-year military dictatorship: Nostalgia for the Light (2010), The Pearl Button (2015), which won Berlin’s Silver Bear for Best Screenplay, and The Cordillera of Dreams (2019), which won the Golden Eye documentary prize at the Cannes Film Festival.

For his final documentary – the 2022 work My Imaginary Country – Guzmán explored his native country’s contemporary politics and the youth-led popular protests that erupted in Chile in 2019 around democracy and social equality.