Augusto Pinochet: Last News

Anna Marie de la Fuente When Chile’s preeminent documentarian, Patricio Guzman, receives a lifetime achievement award at the Santiago Int’l Film Festival (Sanfic) on Aug. 16, he’ll also be marking his 81st birthday.Born on Aug. 11, 1941, Guzman has made more than 20 documentaries at an average of one every two to five years.

EXCLUSIVE: Chilean writer-director Felipe Gálvez, whose debut feature The Settlers premiered in Cannes in 2023, has set his second feature film as Impunity, a spy thriller set in the late 1990s around the arrest of dictator Augusto Pinochet. 

Animation! Pitching Sessions which take part at Ventana Sur, staged in Montevideo over Dec. 2-6.

John Hopewell Chief International Correspondent Chile’s Los Bunkers, one of the most admired of Latin America’s rock bands, has signed on to score “The Last Witness” (“El Ultimo Testigo”), a doc feature portrait of Luis Poirot, a Chilean photographer who has snapped many key events and figures in the country’s history from Salvador Allende to the estallido outburst of social protests in 2019, and beyond. Some of Poirot’s earliest photos, all black and white, capture Allende on his successful 1959 presidential campaign trail, Poirot appointed its official photographer.

Jamie Lang Chilean actor Alfredo Castro (“The Club,” “Tony Manero”) will make his directorial debut with the psychological thriller “Los Trabajadores de la Muerte,” which translates to “the workers of death.” Based on Diamela Eltit’s novel of the same title, the film is penned by Castro and Pablo Valledor. Chile’s Storyboard Media and Les Films de l’Âge d’Or in France co-produce.

Pablo Neruda died in 1973, a Chilean appeals court has ordered the reopening of an investigation. Neruda, a member of the Chilean Communist Party’s Central Committee was regarded as the country’s national poet and a testimony to the power of art. Neruda was a supporter of socialism and an adviser to President Salvador Allende’s leftist government in Chile.

Two of the top contenders for Best Documentary Feature at the Academy Awards have something to celebrate ahead of their upcoming Oscar showdown.

John Hopewell Chief International Correspondent In a notable prestige project package from Chile, Gonzalo Maza, co-writer of Sebastian Lelio’s Academy Award-winning “A Fantastic Woman,” has boarded “I Don’t Know How to Say Goodbye,” a drama thriller non-fiction series to be directed by Carola Fuentes and produced by Rafael Valdeavellano, re-teaming after their collaboration as co-writers and directors on the admired “Chicago Boys,” (2015) and “Breaking the Brick” (2022). Both doc features were nuanced studies of the impact of Chicago school of Neoliberal thought on standard economic policy in Augusto Pinochet’s Chile.

Will Tizard Contributor Cinematographer and director Warwick Thornton scored top honors Saturday at the Camerimage cinematography film festival for his magical tale of an aboriginal youth, “The New Boy,” which film jurors called a distinctive “portrait of an extinguished spirituality.” Thornton, in accepting the Golden Frog, said he had been so moved by the cinematography work onscreen at the fest, a top global event for directors of photography, he’d been “tearing for a week.” Ed Lachman, director of photography for Pablo Larrain’s horror fantasy “El Conde,” inspired by the life of Chilean tyrant Augusto Pinochet, won the Silver Frog for what the jury called “cinematic high poetry,” while the Bronze Frog and Audience Award went to cinematographer Robbie Ryan for his Gothic dream-like imagery in Emma Stone-starrer “Poor Things,” directed by Yorgos Lanthimos. Actor Peter Dinklage, honored with a festival director’s prize, expressed his gratitude for the Frog statuette, noting actors are “nothing without our collaborators,” followed onstage by cinematographer Mandy Walker, who also served as main jury president, also honored for her work on films such as “Elvis” and “Mulan.” Polish director Krzysztof Zanussi, one of the founders of the European Film Academy, was also feted for lifetime achievement in directing, as was cinematographer Peter Biziou (“The Wall,” “The Truman Show”) in the closing gala, held in Camerimage’s cavernous Jordanki screening hall.

Two-time Oscar-nominated cinematographer Ed Lachman looked shattered by the time he sat down with us for an interview here at EnergaCamerimage in Torun, Poland. 

Will Tizard Contributor The 30th edition of the Camerimage Film Festival, Europe’s top cinematography event, will welcome a host of stellar guests to the Gothic Polish town of Torun, including Adam Driver, Sean Penn and Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences CEO Bill Kramer. Driver and Penn will screen their latest films, respectively, the high-octane biopic “Ferrari” and the portrait of Eastern Europe’s most remarkable wartime president, Volodymyr Zelensky, “Superpower.” As regular fest guests have learned, the calendar of film screenings is just as important to study as the schedule for panels, seminars and masterclasses.

Peter Caranicas Deputy Editor EnergaCamerimage, the cinematography-focused film festival that will take place in Torun, Poland, Nov. 11-18, has announced three more films for its Main Competition: “El Conde,” “Filip” and “Ferrari.” “El Conde,” helmed by Chilean director Pablo Larraín (“Jackie,” “Spencer”), is billed as a dark comedy/horror picture that imagines a parallel universe in which Chile’s late fascistic dictator Augusto Pinochet is a vampire hiding away in a ruined mansion.

Anna Marie de la Fuente Underscoring its historical importance, a further production marking the 50th death anniversary of Chile’s socialist president Salvador Allende could well be in the works. The historical drama, provisionally titled “The Meeting,” details a historical encounter between the doomed president, whose downfall heralded the rise of the infamous military dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet in 1973.

Anna Marie de la Fuente Spain’s Onza Distribution, with offices in Madrid and Miami, has seized international rights to mini-series “Allende, the Thousand Days,” released this year to mark the 50th anniversary of the death of Chile’s first socialist president, Salvador Allende, and sadly, the military coup that kickstarted general Augusto Pinochet’s brutal regime. Lead produced by Chile’s Parox (“Invisible Heroes,” “The Substitute”), in collaboration with Mediterraneo Media Entertainment, Aleph Media, 1010 Mente Colectiva and HD Argentina, the mini-series premiered Sept.

A mum-of-five who arrived in Scotland in the 1970s as a teenage refugee from South America has thanked the people of Lanarkshire who opened their homes and their hearts to her family.

A key member of a group of a workers in Lanarkshire who defied a ruthless South American military dictatorship has died, following a short illness.

Fremantle kicked off its presence at the Venice Film Festival with a bang this year with the announcement of its new €150M ($162.7M) Scripted Fund forged in partnership with Israel-based IBI Investment House. 

Pablo Larraín’s string of mostly 20th century biographical dramas hits a pinnacle of audacious brilliance with El Conde (The Count), a madly inspired reinvention of events embedded in the notion that longtime Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet became a vampire who ultimately tires of life and wants out after living some 250 years. 

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent As Chile prepares to mark 50 years since the Sept. 11, 1973 coup by Augusto Pinochet, Chilean auteur Pablo Larraín is back in Venice – following “Spencer” in 2021 – with scathing satire “El Conde,” in which Pinochet, a symbol of global fascism, resurfaces as a 250-year old vampire living in a rundown rural mansion after faking his death. “Pinochet had never been portrayed in film or TV before,” Larrain said.

Chilean filmmaker Pablo Larraín returns to Venice this evening with his latest pic El Conde, a black-and-white satire of dictator Augusto Pinochet, which he co-wrote and directed for Netflix.

With six feature credits in the last decade, Pablo Larraín is among the most prolific filmmakers working today, but he returns to the Lido this week with a new proposition. 

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent Chilean auteur Pablo Larraín is back in Venice – following “Spencer” in 2021 – with scathing satire “El Conde,” in which Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet, a symbol of global fascism, resurfaces as a 250-year old vampire living in a rundown rural mansion after faking his death. The allegorical film, beautifully shot in black-and-white by ace cinematographer Ed Lachman, stars revered 87-year-old Chilean actor Jaime Vadell in the role of Pinochet, who in reality died at the age of 91 in 2006, unpunished and rich. During Pinochet’s 17-year regime, which began with a bloody military coup in 1973, more than 3,000 people died or disappeared due to political violence in Chile, which had previously experienced a long history of democracy.