By Natalia Hernández Moreno*
When Machuca premiered at Cannes’ Directors’ Fortnight in 2004, it immediately stood out as a poignant and politically charged coming-of-age story. A major success in its native Chile, Andrés Wood’s film was praised for its unflinching socio-political perspective, reigniting public discourse about the Pinochet dictatorship—a subject long pushed to the margins. Two decades later, its themes of class division, political upheaval, and lost innocence remain as urgent as ever, making Machuca just as powerful and relevant today as it was upon its release.
Set in Chile in 1973, during the final days of President Allende’s government and the lead-up to Augusto Pinochet’s bloody coup, Wood’s third feature is an astonishingly intimate and deeply affecting story of friendship and political awakening. The film follows two 12-year-old boys, Gonzalo Infante (Matías Quer) and Pedro Machuca (Ariel Mateluna), from opposite ends of the social spectrum who forge an unlikely bond amid the growing turmoil.
Acknowledged by Wood as his most autobiographical film, Machuca draws inspiration from his childhood and from Father Gerardo Whelan, the principal of Saint George College, who sought to integrate marginalized children into Chile’s private education system through a scholarship program.
Also starring Manuela Martelli, Aline Küppenheim, Ernesto Malbrán, Francisco Reyes, and Argentine actor Federico Luppi, the film captures the innocence and curiosity of childhood while critically examining the intersection of education and government policy in the shadow of the coup. Though deeply rooted in Chilean history, Machuca resonates across Latin America, where class and racial prejudices continue to shape economic and political realities.
The film also served as a launchpad for Martelli, who plays Silvana and went on to build a successful acting career, reuniting with Wood for The Good Life (2008) and collaborating with directors such as Sebastián Lelio, Alicia Scherson, and Martín Rejtman in films like Christmas (2009), The Future (2013), and Two Shots Fired (2014). In 2022, she made her directorial debut with Chile 1976, a Hitchcockian noir thriller set during the early years of Pinochet’s dictatorship. The film earned a Directors Guild of America (DGA) Award nomination and won the Cinema Tropical Award for Best First Film.
Director Wood studied economics at Universidad Católica de Chile before pursuing film at New York University. His debut feature, Football Stories / Historias de fútbol (1997), interwove three narratives through the cultural passion for soccer. His second feature, Loco Fever / La fiebre del loco (2001), explored the complexities of love and survival in a remote Chilean fishing village. After Machuca, he directed The Good Life (2008) and Violeta Went to Heaven (2011), a biopic of Chilean folk legend Violeta Parra. His most recent film, Spider (2019), revisits the historical era of Machuca, exploring the evolution of radical right-wing activism through parallel timelines—one set in 1973, the other in the present day.
The success of Machuca, along with Matías Bize’s low-budget Sábado a year earlier, opened the doors for Chilean independent cinema and marked a significant moment for the country’s film scene. Over the past two decades, Chile has launched the global careers of numerous filmmakers—including Pablo Larraín, Maite Alberdi, Sebastián Lelio, Alicia Scherson, José Luis Torres Leiva, and Sebastián Silva, to name a very few—who have left their mark on world cinema.
A landmark in Chilean and Latin American cinema, Machuca was a watershed moment, both in its production and in bringing the discussion of the dictatorship into mainstream conversation. A poignant blend of political drama and coming-of-age narrative, the film remains deeply relevant in today’s politically fraught times, reaffirming cinema’s enduring power to confront historical wounds that have long been silenced.
The film had its U.S. theatrical release in January 2005 at Film Forum in New York City, where it enjoyed a very successful run, expanding to other cities. During its New York engagement, Machuca garnered critical acclaim, including a highly positive review by A.O. Scott of The New York Times, who described it as "sweet and stringent, attuned to the wonders of childhood as well as its cruelty and terror."
To commemorate Machuca’s 20th anniversary, Cinema Tropical has partnered with the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM) for a special screening this Wednesday, March 5, in New York City.
*Natalia Hernández Moreno is a researcher for Cinema Tropical and frequent collaborator for TropicalFRONT
