Claudio Vargas

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…

Two women who have spent their whole lives together must deal with the illness affecting one of them. The sick woman decides not to have treatment and they move into a cabin in the woods to wait for the day that death will come into their lives. The situation sees the resurfacing of the love that time had buried under the routine. Gradually their relationship will strengthen as death bides its time outside the cabin.

Somewhere at the end of the world, where ocean and rocks play their endless games of hide and seek, lives a man. In his mysterious solitude, he is not alone. One day, remains of a white whale are washed by a storm on a beach. In this stranded portrait inspired by H. Melville’s masterpiece Moby Dick the director questions our inner reality and our own gaze on it.

The Araucaria araucana is a prehistoric tree species, present on earth for millions of years. "Vestiges" tells its story from its origin in a visual and chronological way, showing its resistance to the different external forces it has to face, the different ways it has been related to humans, until the disease that threatens them, as a consequence of the climate change.

Yun is grounded by her father for spending three days away from home for breaking family traditions. In her stoic nocturnal journey through the streets, malls and service centers, Yun experiences an accelerated maturity, of which she only realizes when she returns and faces her father.

Yun is grounded by her father for spending three days away from home for breaking family traditions. In her stoic nocturnal journey through the streets, malls and service centers, Yun experiences an accelerated maturity, of which she only realizes when she returns and faces her father.

In the prelude of the twentieth century, Pedro arrives in Tierra del Fuego, an hostile and violent territory, to immortalise the marriage of a powerful landowner. Fascinated by the beauty of the bride-to-be, he betrays the rules and is left to face the land, crawling with violence and marked by the genocide of the land indigenous.

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

During a very dry summer in an isolated community far from the city. Sofia, Clara and Lucas face their first loves and fears, while preparing the New Year's party, without knowing that nature threatens them.

During a very dry summer in an isolated community far from the city. Sofia, Clara and Lucas face their first loves and fears, while preparing the New Year's party, without knowing that nature threatens them.

María, a girl from Colonia Dignidad, in Chile —a kind of sectarian community, tyrannically mastered by the ruthless Paul Schäfer, a German madman, religious fanatic and child predator, who would end up turning the place into a torture center at the service of the military dictatorship ruled by Augusto Pinochet—, is punished for having lost three pigs, so she decides to run away and take refuge in an abandoned house hidden in the forest.

Martina was a famous singer in Argentina during the late 90s, who's become completely frigid and disenchanted with love. The arrival of a so-called sister, alongside her attractive boyfriend, compel Martina to go to Chile with one objective in mind: getting back her libido.

In the nineteenth century, a French adventurer sets off to establish a kingdom in the inhospitable South of Chile, uniting the feared Mapuche under him. The response of the Chilean army is devastating.

Easter Island is the second-most remote island from a continent in the world, after the Tristan da Cunha archipelago. It is located in the Pacific Ocean 3,680 kilometres away from Chile (of which it is part), inhabited for centuries by a population of Polynesian origin (for whom its name is Rapa-Nui). Exploited by European colonisers from the 18th century onwards, visited by archaeologists, anthropologists and tourists attracted by the moai, the large tuff statues that people its coastlines, and filmed thousands of times, it has a stable population and an administration that manages the existence of the community, including justice. The presence, on this isolated territory from which escape is difficult, of a prison, even if it is a building without walls, is therefore a bizarre paradox...

Four high school seniors steal an important college entrance exam and go on vacation to "study," but accidentally lose the exam while partying.

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

An unexpected guest interrupts a couple's last day together, transforming their peaceful farewell.

Two brothers return to Chile after years in Iraq.

Looking for extras and locations, a filmmaker settles on Chiloé, the second largest island off the coast of Chile. He does auditions, but mainly listens patiently to the stories of young and old people. As an outsider, he cautiously searches for the soul of the community and its underlying tensions.

Mauro, Noel and Broco have been an inseparable group of friends since grade school. All grown up, their lives are not what they hoped they would be. Life has become so routine that they do nothing more than wait for the weekends to drink themselves into oblivion. One night, a chance encounter leads the group on a wild and deadly chase from Santiago's most dangerous crime boss... Forced to make increasingly risky decisions, their frantic, adrenaline fueled desperation brings them closer to a violent, life-changing end where the friendship will be changed forever.

A group of people gather for a family reunion in a house on an isolated island. They are waiting for the last person to join them, but as the evening arrives and he doesn’t arrive, a strange anxiety overwhelms them. The group dismantles and the family members wander away from the house separately, confronting the sea and an unspoken fear that slowly consumes them.

Leo Quinteros music is the base to this film in which filmmakers, actors and actresses and other creators reunite in different hotel rooms.

In the midst of the battle between a humble technical center and a powerful university for the award to build a robot to Chile, love arises.

“Having broken away from my illusory self, I was desperately seeking a path and a meaning to life.” This phrase perfectly sums up Alejandro Jodorowsky’s biographical project: reconstituting the incredible adventure of his life. Alejandro Jodorowsky was born in 1929 in Tocopilla, a coastal town on edge of the Chilean desert, where this film was shot. It was there where he discovered the fundamentals of reality, as he underwent an unhappy and alienated childhood as part of an uprooted family.

As she and her family embark on a short vacation, a Chilean teenager slowly comes to the realization that her parents might be splitting up.

Lucía is a young woman who works as a seamstress in a factory and lives with her father in an old house in Santiago, Chile. The film occurs in December 2006 during the weeks that take place from the ex-dictator Pinochet’s funeral to Christmas Eve. Through the simple observation of Lucía’s daily life, the spectator is allowed access into a hidden and neglected world of a generation of Chileans striving to recover from the military dictatorship.

Isidora, an old woman, discovers that her mind is quickly deteriorating. At an apparently relaxed dinner table, she will desperately try to hide her state from her daughter, a demanding woman who awaits any sign of senility in order to take way everything she has.

In Chile, 1973, during the last days of Salvador Allende's presidency, an employee at a Morgue's recording office falls for a burlesque dancer who mysteriously disappears.

Displays the experiences of diverse groups of people inside a supermarket.

Ana, Verónica, Marta, and Toro are four lonely people who live an unadventurous and quiet existence in southern Chile. They are with each other without the need of using words, trying to save themselves in a stealthy and extreme way. In order not only of getting away of the loneliness that constitutes their innermost core, but also of finding themselves, they reach for each other to get brotherly and sexual love, affection, and a space and time of their own.

The businessman who sends the first Chilean astronaut into outer space can't quite come up with the money to bring the adventurer back.

The businessman who sends the first Chilean astronaut into outer space can't quite come up with the money to bring the adventurer back.

Children come to a hospital to visit their dying father they haven't seen for 8 years. They try to recover their relationships before he dies.

Cecilia Ureta, host of Chile's highest-rated news show, announces the results of a United Nations survey, the conclusion of which states that 62% of Chilean women are or have never been unfaithful. Ironically, Cecilia maintains an extramarital relationship with the network's owner. Maliciously, a rival colleague discovers this during a live broadcast, with tragic results. The revelation spreads becoming a conversation of national interest.

Two friends find themselves in search of their lost money after a drug transaction goes wrong.

Lota, 1897. In the depths of the largest coal mine in the world, a great rebellion is brewing inside a man's heart.