Chile ’76

Synopsis

In this tense, artful drama set during the early years of the Pinochet dictatorship, affluent matriarch Carmen heads to her family’s beach house to oversee its renovation. When she arrives, she’s asked by her priest to care for an injured young man he has taken in; she agrees, only to discover that her new charge is fleeing the military police and her act of charity has unwittingly placed her in perilous circumstances. Taut and restrained like its lead character, this quiet thriller is structured around an impossible, urgent conflict: Will Carmen protect herself and her family or stand up to a brutal regime with a simple and potentially fatal act of resistance?