Mi país imaginario (My Imaginary Country) by Chilean master Patricio Guzmán (1941), showing as a Special Screening at Cannes, is an immensely moving film. Because of the courage and determination of the activists portrayed, and because in Chile now, thanks to those activists, it looks like there’s a real chance of social justice becoming reality.
And it’s moving, on another level, to know that all this is observed by the chronicler of the Pinochet dictatorship, who, after fifty years, sees another generation of political activists fulfilling the dreams he, as a young man, saw crushed.
For thirty years, Chile seemed like a shopping mall to him, recalls Guzmán in one of his calm and thoughtful voice-overs. He seems genuinely surprised by the recent outburst of social activism in the country that he has been documenting for decades. And he approaches this new generation of activists with an open and curious mind. It’s impressive and touching that after all these years of struggle and suffering, his thinking shows no trace of bitterness or ideological rigidity.
When you want to film a fire, you have to be present at the very first spark, he was once told by French filmmaker Chris Marker, with whom he made the classic La batalla de Chile (The Battle of Chile, 1975), about that earlier time of social revolution and hope under the government of Salvador Allende, before it was ended by the CIA-backed military coup under Augusto Pinochet.
Then, he filmed everything. But this time he had missed the spark, Guzmán admits. He hadn’t seen it coming. Because this isn’t a revolution by political parties with clear leaders, programmes and spokespersons. This is a true grassroots movement, which itself didn’t know it existed until suddenly, after a few students started protesting an increase in subway fares in 2019, the demonstrators found themselves, in ever-increasing numbers, in the streets. Shouting, chanting, banging on pots and pans. And then, after a police crackdown, throwing stones and wearing gas masks.
When the protests continued, the then-president Sebastián Piñera declared a state of emergency and brought in the army. This, Guzmán says, was immediately and widely resisted by the population, many of whom still remembered the dictatorship. He himself was shocked to see young people fighting armoured vehicles and soldiers shooting at protesters, imagining himself back in the Pinochet era. But although these confrontations caused many casualties, the large-scale demonstrations continued.
At this point in his film, Guzmán switches focus. He now turns his attention to the artist-activists painting on walls, the singing of new protest songs, and the outpouring of energy and hope which galvanised ever more people into joining this social revolution. Because this time, the scenes of violence in the streets were not enough for those in power to scare the general population back into submission. On the contrary, the indignation became ever more widespread.
Carefully and subtly, with his voice-over providing only essential morsels of information, with short interviews illuminating first this, then that aspect of the underlying forces involved, and without delving into ideological discussions, Guzmán sketches a remarkably clear picture of this leaderless grassroots movement. A diverse movement which, seemingly against all odds and in ways quite different from the activism of the 60s and 70s, crystallized into a coherent and widely supported call for a new Constitution – replacing the one established during the Pinochet regime. A referendum on the creation of a Constituent Assembly for this new text, which the government was eventually forced to agree to, was won by eighty percent of the votes.
A look at that triumphant Assembly reveals the character of this grassroots movement. We see young and old people, some in suits, others casually dressed, half the members being women, an Indigenous chairwoman. Different groups and activisms which had lived in parallel, suddenly coalesced against a common enemy and with similar goals. Interestingly, there are clear similarities with political discussions on diversity and inclusivity taking place in other parts of the world, including in my own country, the Netherlands, and even at the Cannes festival.
The common enemy, as different activists explain in simple terms, is the system of oppression by the neo-liberal capitalist patriarchy. That is what binds the different subgroups of the movement who, it bears repeating, were not brought together through leaderships, debates and workshops, but by themselves, as activists, emotionally and politically. Because at some moment everybody realised that feminist activism, the fight for the rights of Indigenous people
s, the struggles of the poor and many other social battles are not separate, but connected.
Later, political meetings were organised all over the country in which everyone could participate. Here again, the main ideas for an alternative system, mentioned by different activists, are just as useful elsewhere in the world. These include a true democracy, truly representing the diversity of the population; dignity for all, which includes public systems of healthcare and education independent of income levels; and the guarantee of human rights for all oppressed groups, from women to Indigenous peoples.
The fact that all these different groups suddenly found each other, after the spark of student protests ignited the fire of social revolution – including a demonstration of 1.2 million people in Santiago, the largest the country had ever seen – points to an inclusivity which is capable of bringing down barriers and bridging differences between groups and types of activism that previously remained on their separate islands. This inclusivity is also why Guzmán himself, who is of a different generation and used to a different kind of social activism and political struggle, can so easily identify with what has been happening in Chile these last few years.
And sees that, in different ways and by different activists, his old dreams of social justice are now on the cusp of coming true.
France/Chili, 2022, 83 minutes
Director Patricio Guzmán
Production Atacama Productions
International Sales Pyramide International
Producer Renate Sachse
Script Patricio Guzmán
Cinematography Samuel Lahu
Editing Laurence Manheimer
Sound Aymeric Dupas, Claire Cahu
Music Jose Miguel Tobar
With Mónica González, feminist collective Las Tesis, Elisa Loncón, Nona Fernández, Nicole Kramm, Claudia Heiss
