The Cordillera of Dreams

LA CORDILLERA DE LOS SUEÑOS is the conclusion of a trilogy that Chilean documentary director Patricio Guzmán began in 2010 with HOME TO THE STARS and continued in 2015 with THE PERLMUTT KNOPF. In the third part, Guzmán, who has lived in exile in Paris since the Pinochet coup in 1973, looks at the nature of his homeland as a symbol of the political history of revolutionary utopia, fascist dictatorship and neoliberal overexploitation of society. After the Atacama Desert - the driest area in the world and the most important location for space telescopes, but also the site of Pinochet's concentration camp - and the waters of the Pacific, in which thousands of opponents of the regime were drowned tied to railway tracks, Guzmán now turns his attention to the Andes Mountains. 80% of Chile's surface is made up by these mountains, and yet they remain a blind spot in Chilean consciousness - similar to the atrocities of the dictatorship and the unbroken tradition of resistance against it. Although these historical circumstances continue to significantly influence the political and economic realities of the country to this day, they have nonetheless been suppressed from society's perception. Guzmán's powerful documentary is therefore also a work of awareness and committed reappraisal.