‘My Imaginary Country’ Review: Patricio Guzmán’s Quietly Inspirational Doc on Chile’s Recent Grass-Roots Activism
variety.comJessica Kiang When left-wing coalition leader Gabriel Boric was elected to the Chilean premiership in 2021, he was 35 years old.
When, a few months later, he was sworn in as the nation’s youngest-ever president — also the youngest state leader in the world — revered Chilean filmmaker Patricio Guzmán was 80. “My Imaginary Country” is Guzmán’s examination of the 2019-2021 social protest movements that contributed to Boric’s rise.
And while in formal terms it’s more of a standard, reportage-based doc than any of his recent essays, it is also the rarest of projects: one in which a venerated member of an older generation of political activists communicates a fervent admiration for his younger counterparts and a deep, grateful optimism for the future they are building.
It starts — in the more personal register to which fans of the latter-day Guzmán filmography are accustomed — with a brick. The filmmaker narrates in his warmly melodic, ASMR-provoking Spanish how such bricks and stones were pulled up from the pavements of Santiago (much like they had been in France during the May ’68 unrest) for use by civilian protesters as defensive weapons against the tear gas and rubber bullets of the police.
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