Paola Castillo

The first feature from Alison McAlpine is a dialogue with the heavens—in this case, the heavens above the Andes and the Atacama Desert in northern Chile, where she alights on the desert- and mountain-dwelling astronomers, fishermen, miners, and cowboys who live their lives with reverence and awe for the skies.

Committed to unearthing her ancestors' silenced history, Margarita embarks on a profound journey, guided by the diary of Katrulaf, an indigenous Mapuche prisoner of war. She retraces the Mapuches’ deportation route, and in unearthing these pasts, gives voice to a displaced people and the genocide inflicted upon them during the military invasions that founded Argentina and Chile.

Mauricio, a lifeguard on a Chilean beach, considers himself to be a model of efficiency and professionalism. His colleagues, however, think otherwise, and speculate on why he never goes into the water. Maite Alberdi's visually gorgeous feature documentary debut has the intensity of a short story; beginning as a quirky character study of lifeguards and beachgoers, it becomes something altogether darker and more shocking when events take a dramatic turn.

The fuzzy boundaries between sanity and insanity in an isolated Christian group come to light when one of its members dies in strange circumstances. Since then, a harsh judicial process jeopardizes their fate as a group. A story about faith and social prejudices.

Iselsa and Cathy decided to be part of a project designed by leaders of social architecture, who will give them their own home and integrate them into a middle class neighborhood. The camera observes for 7 years: the lack of resources, a neighborhood that rejects them, problems in construction and the disaster caused by the rains. The most difficult thing will be to overcome the division of the community.

They are women. They are mothers. They are inmates serving long sentences in a prison in Chile. Their children grow up far from them, but remain in their hearts. In prison they find the affection of other inmates who share their same experience. Mutual support among these women becomes a form of resistance and emancipation. Malqueridas reconstructs their stories through the images they themselves shot with cell phones prohibited inside the prison, recovering the collective memory of a forgotten community.

Juan Carlos is a lonko who has fought in defense of Mapuche autonomy. Many question him because he agreed to work for the government in order to improve conditions in his community. At home he shares his concerns, while his animals watch the tension grow and the seasons advance.

In 1995, the Chilean state made a grave mistake when it detained Marcelina (68), an Indigenous spiritual authority, a machi of the Mapuche people. The police stripped her of her jewelry and traditional clothing and sent her to a men’s prison despite her identifying as a woman. She was unjustly accused of murdering a patient through witchcraft, triggering feelings that led her to leave her community, even after her innocence was proven. Thirty years later, Cons (34) delves into her story—into a world foreign to her—confronting lessons and prejudices she had never known.