MACHUCA

Country: Chile
Director: Andres Wood
Lead Actors: Matías Quer, Ariel Mateluna, Manuela Martelli, Aline Küppenheim, Ernesto Malbran, Tamara Acosta, Francisco Reyes, and Alejandro Trej
Running time: 120 min.
Spanish with English subtitles
Rating: 14A (Violence)

"Both sweet and stringent, attuned to the wonders of childhood as well as its cruelty and terror." - A. O. Scott, New York Times

Up-and-coming Chilean director Andrés Wood has classically crafted one of the best Latin American films of recent years, a semi-autobiographical account of the tragic events of Chile's 1973 coup seen through the eyes of two 11-year-old boys.

Pedro Machuca (Ariel Mateluna) is a poor boy of tribal descent, brought into an upper class private school during Chile’s brief socialist era. Gonzalo (Matias Quer), the well-to-do boy seated a row ahead, befriends Pedro against the bullying will of his classmates. In so doing, he discovers a raw, thrilling but wildly complicated world outside his own previously sheltered homelife. Pedro’s fierce, attractive young neighbor Silvana (Manuela Martelli) by turns mocks Gonzalo’s pampered background, only to fondly lead both boys in a number of kissing games. All around them, Chile drifts toward civil war. Protest marches fill the Santiago streets with zealots of the right and left. At school, their humane headmaster Father McEnroe (Ernesto Malbran) comes under an hysteria-driven attack by parents for his charity toward poor students. He therefore escapes into his friendship with Pedro, and for a time the two boys become witnesses to each other’s lives. Pedro gets a look at the intense dysfunctions in Gonzalo’s life, and Gonzalo in turn is immersed in Pedro’s world of extreme poverty. The two boys share a love of comic books devoted to the Lone Ranger. With Sylvana’s encouragement they also take part in protest marches -- selling cigarettes and flags to demonstrators on the right as well as the left, but chanting with committed vigor when marching with the left.

MACHUCA is not just a political drama, but a poignant coming-of-age film, with perfectly pitched performances by the young actors.

"You don't have to know Chile's bloody history to be moved by the poignant new film Machuca, the first movie made by a Chilean about the country's 1973 military coup." – Russell Smith, New York Post