Matías Illanes

The list of fantastic, mythical animals compiled by Carl Linnaeus in his seminal 18th century work Systema Naturae could well be the seed of Niles Atallah’s Animalia Paradoxa – an eccentric tale set in a post-apocalyptic world that follows a strange creature struggling to survive. Dressed in rags and a gas mask, moving like an alien dancer, Animalia roams through an abandoned building – crawling and stretching across concrete, plastic, waste. She laboriously carries and fills up an array of empty bottles to enjoy a modest bath. The camera eye lingers on her with compassion and explores the architectures of trash at an agonising pace. We know in our hearts that Animalia is a human-amphibian longing for the sea…

Gioconda Martínez, a well-remembered comic television actress, decided to return to her hometown to stage a play about the conquest of Chile, which will allow her to regain the artistic recognition she thought she had lost but never had.

Santiago de Chile, 2012. When she goes back to classes at her all-girls high school, Alexandra (17) does not want to face reality: neither the failure of a year of mobilization nor her early pregnancy. Going from utopia, where politics is handled between women, to the repetitive domestic character of her home is a radical change. Alexandra sees her dreams fading away, and her self-destructive ghosts coming back to her again.

Michelsen, an older trucker who is lonely and sick, while traveling through Patagonia meets someone on the highway who reminds him of his daughter, whom he has not seen in years.

Cristina and Susana have been best friends since high school. Now, both over 30 years old, they are still living like they did in their teenage years. Or maybe they never grew up.

A director's love letter to his neighborhood: its people, his house and his family.

A director's love letter to his neighborhood: its people, his house and his family.

Josefina, a radical homemaker, committed a crime of passion that led her to self-exile at a coastal town. She tries to find peace in solitude, immersed in the house routine, while coexisting with a past of lovers and Molotov cocktails. Her body suffers the metamorphosis of aging, and she must undergo cataract surgery.

A dialogue between the collective and the personal, a living memory that combines the dreams and realities of the Haitian community residing in Chile. This dialogue is guided by the voice of Wilner Petit-Frère, a Haitian immigrant who observes and captures, in a print publication, the society where he ended up living in this stage of his life.

Ariel gets involved in a teenager's civil arrest, who is accused of stealing a phone. A mob surrounds the young man and some curse and beat him, some defend him. The police isn't showing up. Ariel has to decide what side he is on.

A young couple living with their little daughter are shaken to the core when a childhood friend is released from prison and wants the money he won from an old debt.

Something dwells in the deep.

Neel, an ambitious businessman, has bought a crumbling palace to transform into a luxury hotel. He fails to realize that the stones come to life each night, engulfing anyone that dares to trespass.

A rebellious young man nicknamed Tano and a shy Mapuche boy named Cheo bond together by facing the violence and prejudice they carry during their complicated adolescence.

A rebellious young man nicknamed Tano and a shy Mapuche boy named Cheo bond together by facing the violence and prejudice they carry during their complicated adolescence.

Emeteria is visited by a ghost she believes has come to take her to the afterlife. But he has more devastating news.

Introverted Juan, manager of a mannequin factory, lives alone with his eighteen-year-old gay son, Pablo. Whilst Pablo blithely studies dance, Juan is hoping that, after twenty-five years at the firm, his boss will consider him for a partnership. When Pablo is badly wounded in a brutal homophobic attack which sees him hospitalised, his father realises just how far they have become estranged. A lack of witnesses and expensive medical bills force Juan to leave the quiet stability of his life for good and reposition himself in a world where there is discrimination. Time and again his efforts come to nought, until one night on the streets of Santiago he makes up his own rules in order to save his son.

Impressionist portrait of a landscape forged by tragedy. A ghostly wanderer among the vestiges of a story where 44 young soldiers and a sergeant were pushed to their deaths

Yermén is a transsexual woman in her mid-thirties that works as a tarot reader, and lives in the emblematic low-income neighbourhood of La Victoria. Looking for a sex reassignment, she decides to try for a plastic surgery TV show, where she will meet an enigmatic immigrant who wants to get an operation to look like Naomi Campbell.

Old man Eladio is dying. Throughout the last decades, he has lived alone, working in his old liquor factory. Modernity threatens his spirits business, but he refuses to abandon it. A visit by his oldest grandson will be the ideal moment to save the factory, while at the same time, reconnect with his family.

Rumors spread like wildfire in a small Chilean town as an aborted fetus is found floating on a lake. A single mother and saleswoman’s values and morals are put to test when she discovers the culprit to be one of her young female clients.