Cristóbal León

Following the sudden death of his mother, a mild-mannered but anxiety-ridden man confronts his darkest fears as he embarks on an epic odyssey back home.

After escaping from a religious colony in Chile, Maria seeks shelter in a mansion where she’s taken in by two pigs, its only inhabitants. Like in a stop-motion dream, the universe of the house reacts to her feelings. The animals slowly morph into humans and the house into a dark, menacing world.

Diana is the princess of an ancient kingdom. Her father, King Arthur, forbids love. When Diana falls in love with Lalo, he banishes him. Using a magical bracelet, Diana travels to other worlds in search of her love.

Inspired by real events, "Bestia" enters the life of a secret police agent in the military dictatorship in Chile. The relationship with her dog, her body, her fears and frustrations, reveal a macabre fracture in her mind and a country.

Luis talks about his life in the forest and how he fell in love with Lucía.

Using human corpses and invoking the spirits of two damned Secretaries of State, a girl performs a ritual to free the kingdom of Chile from its feudal heritage.

In a world eaten by darkness, a ghostly interference conveys the tale of two souls who, in their final act of love, cast a spell to become a candle: An eternal flame that defies the infinite gloom. Through the distorted echo, its light flickers like a whisper of resistance in an endless abyss.

In his travels through the southern sea of Chile, the privateer Francis Drake discovered a strange island. The extraordinary events that he lived there described in his travel diary have disappeared just like the island.

"Golpe a golpe" (Family coup) was a Chilean television sitcom from the 1970s and 1980s. In this series, the family of the stern anti-communist dictator Augusto Pinochet found themselves forced to share their home with the spirit of the late former socialist president Salvador Allende, who was portrayed by a puppet. This short film aims to salvage this show's existence by extracting fragments from its surviving material.

Actress and psychologist Antonia Giesen decides to film a script revealed by a voice within the mind of one of her patients. Seeking collaboration with the filmmaking duo León & Cociña, they craft a crossroads of theatre, science fiction, animation and fabulated biopic, populated by parallel worlds and haunted by the shadow of a Chilean Nazi writer as a demonic figure.

Cinematic memorial, designed to echo the names and memories of the underage victims of forced disappearance during the military dictatorship.

"Nocturno de Chile" is composed of two videos: "La Cacería" ("The Hunt") and "La Cena" ("The Dinner"). Both videos are adaptations of Roberto Bolaño’s novel by the same title. The videos are meant to be viewed side by side, each video representing an adjacent room. In one room we find a dinner of intellectuals and writers; and in the neighboring room a torture is taking place.

Darker re-visioning of the Grimm's fairy-tale by directors León and Cociña, where the narrative itself becomes lost.

Lucía remembers the summer when she fell in love with Luis and her fear of the dark.

In a room there is a box. In the box there is a forest. In the forest there is a lost child. Living beings made of paper appear and vanish in "Der Kleinere Raum".

Short film by Cristóbal León & Paula Salas.

The Tale of the Dog is a short film made in five days by the participants of an intensive workshop guided by Cristóbal León and Joaquín Cociña in Balmaceda Arte Joven.

An intergalactic traveler cares for various beasts aboard a ship. An unexpected disaster will give rise to a new type of creature.

Jaime Guzmán, the main ideologist of the Pinochet dictatorship and author of the Chilean Constitution, slips into a witch's dream. She confronts her different personifications and tries to drive away her visitor using witchcraft. She curses, sings, dances and reintroduces herself in alternative versions of herself.

In "Los Andes", a restless primal spirit takes possession of an office room. Drawings appear on the walls, plant-like forms sprout from the computer and overgrow the desktop. As it finds it way trough the office space, the mysterious entity transforms into the limbs of a giant and dissolves again.

An animation film in which two papier-mâché puppets are stalked in a sequence of sexual, bestial, and solemn acts. A ceremony which presents the beginning of a myth and its immediate decadence. (Part of the trilogy "The Third World." The films of the series "The Third World" are the foundational chapters of a new creed. They present a procession moving between sacred and intimate, beautiful and horrific, canonical and arbitrary.)

One summer day the animals of the forest are invited to a party. They eat a ton of cake and dance all night long. When the party is over they find that all of the trees they use for shelter and food are gone. Strange creatures have stolen their homes, so they decide to go search for them.

Between 2010 and 2011, Cristóbal León and Joaquín Cociña created the series of short-films “The Third World”. The series is made up of “Padre.Madre”, “EL Templo” and “El Arca”. The films were shown together as a film installation at Upstream Gallery. These films are the foundational chapters of a new creed. They present a savage procession, moving between sacred and intimate, beautiful and horrific, canonical and arbitrary, sublime and bestial. Every film is the beginning of a myth and also its immediate decadence.