Cristián Sánchez

Directing

Cristián Sánchez

Born June 19, 1951 · Santiago (age 75)

Luis Cristián Sánchez Garfias (Santiago, June 19, 1951) is a Chilean director, screenwriter and film scholar. He studied, like several other filmmakers of his generation, at the School of Communication Arts of the Universidad Católica before the dictatorship. His films, all low-budget, have generally had little public diffusion, both because of their airtight content and because of the scarce sup…

Known For

MarihuanaMarihuana · 1975
Marihuana
1975
Movie
Institutional documentary about the use of Cannabis in 70s Chile.
Cautiverio felizCautiverio feliz · 1998
Cautiverio feliz
6.01998
MovieDrama
A young Hispanic-Creole captain spends six months captive among the Mapuche, learning that the supposed “barbarians” were more human than the “civilized” ones.
Hidden CurrentsHidden Currents · 2026
Hidden Currents
2026
Movie
Annelie, an anthropologist dedicated to mortuary rites, investigates her grandfather's suicide during the dictatorship. In a mansion that was once a production facility and later a torture center, she joins forces with a journalist and a mathematician to search for a fragment of film that her grandfather hid, which documents a crime.
With the Feet on the GroundWith the Feet on the Ground · 2024
With the Feet on the Ground
2.82024
Movie
A film director is attacked in his home by two subjects who have usurped the physical resemblance and the name of an actor in his films, long dead. A hypnotic journey, creepy revelations, sorcerers and vegan zombies.
The Inner FlameThe Inner Flame · 2025
The Inner Flame
2025
MovieFantasyMystery
A filmmaker arrives at the house where a friend disappeared. She inquires about her with a man who holds a candle in his hand; with an acolyte who enters people’s dreams; with a forgetful woman, with a denier, and manages to escape the seduction of a satanic group, but is captivated by a demon.
New LoveNew Love · 1968
New Love
1968
MovieRomanceDrama
New Love is a non-linear film that consist in succession of sequences showing the world of young people of the late sixties.Deeply focused on the hippie culture in Chile.
The Holy OfficeThe Holy Office · 2025
The Holy Office
2025
MovieComedyMystery
A writer, who wants to make a film about today's Chile, departs from the usual forms of filming to grasp the mystery of things. He approaches the desired film, in the middle of a relationship crisis, caused by Marcy, a disturbing woman-child who drags him into a fascinating crazy-love relationship. And because the writer understands that true creation involves detaching himself from any subjection to the practical world and accepting the catastrophic as a form of secular holiness, he performs, in the end, an act of immense generosity.
The Invisible LandThe Invisible Land · 2026
The Invisible Land
2026
MovieComedy
A kimche, a Mapuche wise man, arrives at a clinic where patients are demanding more medication. But it is all an illusion: they have been killed by a weküfü, an invisible evil entity. The kimche leads them to Miñche Mapu, where spirits decide who can return to life.

Filmography

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Voy y vuelvoVoy y vuelvo · 2023
Voy y vuelvo
2023
Movie
With the Kafkaesque phrase "he who does not seek does not find, but he who does not seek is found", Sánchez begins an episodic story scripted and filmed in only 27 hours where there is virtually a single location that resembles, in a very stylized way, a prison. From there, Alejandro, a young lumpen, interacts with various characters that burst into the space, generating situations that allude to his minimal survival, reselling or exchanging objects. Voy y vuelvo is verbally organized with an anthropological approach, with the same interest of the director for the Mapuche dialect in Cautiverio Feliz and in Date una vuelta en el aire, and from there incorporates elements of popular culture and the notion of purgatory as a recurring figure.

Director