All screenings at 'Camino a FIDOCS 30' are free. For screenings at the Cineteca Nacional de Chile, you must reserve your ticket online; the link is available here.
The documentary narrates the events that occurred during the first year of the Popular Unity government in chronological order.
In 2012, after the death of French filmmaker Chris Marker, Patricio Guzmán published a text entitled 'What I Owe to Chris Marker'. He owed him, among other things, the impetus that allowed his debut film 'The First Year' to premiere in France in the 1970s, thus launching his international career.
Today, we need to think about what we owe to Patricio Guzmán.
This debt, which was in reality his gift to world cinema, began long before he founded FIDOCS. It goes back to his first cinematic experiments at the Film Institute of the Catholic University and at the Official Film School of Madrid and, of course, to 'The First Year'.
In this film, Patricio Guzmán accompanies the first twelve months of Salvador Allende's government. Guided by a voiceover, we travel the country alongside Mapuche communities reclaiming their lands, miners celebrating the nationalization of coal, and fishermen and farmers trying to explain the transformations they are experiencing. Guzmán captures a still-open present, driven by hope, but also marked by the opposition's strategies to obstruct the process: financial panic, capital flight, and terrorist attacks. The film does not yet reveal the outcome, but it manages to capture the forces and contradictions that would ultimately define it.
Then came the coup, exile, 'The Battle of Chile,' and many other films that preserved the memory of a country that many have tried to erase. And in 1997, seven years after the return to democracy, that same drive led him to create the First International Documentary Film Festival in Chile, which would later become known as FIDOCS. In a context still marked by the silences of the dictatorship, with Pinochet still in command of the Army and no exhibition spaces for non-fiction films, creating a festival was also a way to activate memory, promote discussion, and critically observe the present. Its purpose was to support those filming in isolation, create a meeting place, awaken new vocations, and bring other forms of cinema to the public. FIDOCS thus paved the way for many other films and filmmakers.
Patricio Guzmán (1941-2026) dedicated his career to documentary filmmaking. His films, screened at numerous festivals, earned him international acclaim. Between 1972 and 1979, he made 'The Battle of Chile,' a trilogy about the government of Salvador Allende and its fall, which laid the foundation for his cinematic style. Throughout his extensive career, several of his films premiered at the Cannes Film Festival: 'The Battle of Chile,' 'The Pinochet Case,' 'Salvador Allende,' 'Nostalgia for the Light,' and 'The Cordillera of Dreams.' With this last film, he won the Golden Eye at Cannes in 2019 and it was the first documentary to be awarded a Goya for Best Ibero-American Film in 2022. With 'La nostalgia de la luz' (The Nostalgia of Light) he received the Grand Prize of the European Film Academy in 2010, while 'El botón de nácar' (The Pearl Button) won the Silver Bear at the Berlin Film Festival in 2015. His film 'Mi país imaginario' (My Imaginary Country) was selected for the 2022 Cannes Film Festival. In 2023 he received the National Arts Award for Performing and Audiovisual Arts. Patricio Guzmán was the founder and first director of the Santiago International Documentary Film Festival.