All events at 'Camino a FIDOCS 30' are free. For the performance at Centro Arte Alameda – Sala CEINA, you must book your ticket online via Passline; the link will be available here soon.
In the late 1990s, Patricio Guzmán returned to Santiago to reunite with some of the protagonists of 'The Battle of Chile' and revisit the locations he had filmed more than twenty years earlier. The return became a quest to uncover the memory of a country scarred by the coup and the dictatorship, and by the imposed amnesia of those years.
In 1995, when Patricio Guzmán was planning his return to Chile, producer Yves Jeanneau proposed filming the trip and turning his homecoming into an autobiographical documentary. Guzmán accepted the idea, but gave it a twist: instead of placing himself at the center of it all, he went in search of the former protagonists of 'The Battle of Chile'. More than twenty years after the coup, he toured Santiago with them, revisited the locations, and invited them to recreate scenes and memories on camera.
The trip also had another purpose: to bring 'The Battle of Chile' back to the country. Guzmán screened it for a group of young people who had never seen it and recorded their various reactions. Today, almost thirty years later, what has become of them? What do they think of that screening and of the country they have come to live in?.
Premiering at the first edition of FIDOCS in 1997, "Chile, the Obstinate Memory" returns to close "Road to FIDOCS 30." The journey that began with "The First Year," when history unfolded before his eyes, concludes with Guzmán's return to a country attempting to reconnect with its past. Two moments from the same filmography that we bring together today to pay tribute to the founder of this Festival.
History moves forward, but it also returns.
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.