Saturday, 7 November 2026 at 5 pm
Mi país imaginario
Directed by: Patricio Guzmán
Chile, France / 2022 / 83'
Language: Spanish
Subtitles: Croatian
In honour of the recently deceased Chilean director Patricio Guzmán (1941–2026), one of the most important documentary filmmakers of contemporary cinema, we are screening his final feature film, My Imaginary Country (Mi país imaginario, 2022). Over more than five decades of work, Guzmán tirelessly documented the political history of Chile, exploring the relationship between collective memory, social traumas, and resistance to authoritarian regimes.
The author of the monumental documentary trilogy The Battle for Chile (La batalla de Chile, 1975–1979), dedicated to the political upheaval and the 1973 military coup against Salvador Allende, Guzmán sought throughout his oeuvre to preserve the memory of a history marked by Augusto Pinochet's dictatorship. In later works, such as Nostalgia for the Light (2010), The Pearl Button (2015) and The Cordillera of Dreams (2019), he connected political history with poetic reflections on nature, space and human memory, shaping a distinctive cinematic language at the intersection of documentary testimony and essayistic reflection.
In the film My Imaginary Country, Guzmán returns to the streets of Santiago, where mass protests broke out in October 2019 against social inequality and the legacy of the Pinochet dictatorship. More than a million people took to the streets demanding a more dignified life, a fairer healthcare and education system, and a new constitution. Combining striking footage of the protests with the testimonies of activists, artists and other participants in the social movement, the director captures the energy of a new generation seeking to achieve the political changes he himself campaigned for during the student protests of the 1970s.
Premiering at the 2022 Cannes Film Festival, the film represents a kind of final act in Guzmán's lifelong cinematic exploration of Chilean history. Almost half a century after the military coup that defined his life and work, the director recognises in a new social movement the possibility of a different future, connecting the memory of past struggles with the hope for a more just society. My Imaginary Country thus becomes both a chronicle of a political awakening and a kind of tribute to the country whose history Guzmán has tirelessly documented.