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.
Machuca
✭ ✭ ✭ ✭ Read critic reviews
Chile, Spain, United Kingdom · 2004
2h 1m
Director Andrés Wood
Starring Matías Quer, Ariel Mateluna, Aline Küppenheim, Ernesto Malbran
Genre Drama
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Set during Salvador Allende's controversial presidency, slum-raised Pedro Machuca gets a full-ride scholarship to an elite Catholic boarding school run by progressive Father McEnroe. With budding friendships, political drama, and social tension, a portrait of youth life during the political upheavals of 1970s Chile is revealed.
What are people saying?
What are critics saying?
Wood's film works, first and foremost, as a powerful character drama; it's not trying to teach historical or ideological lessons.
The New York Times by Dana Stevens
Both sweet and stringent, attuned to the wonders of childhood as well as its cruelty and terror.
Richly human in focus, the drama steadily cranks up its political and emotional charge.
New York Daily News by Jack Mathews
An astonishingly intimate and painful coming-of-age story.
Though Machuca ultimately doesn't shy away from taking sides, it wisely keeps the focus on the human element. The politics take place in the background until they demand the foreground.
Wood's drama packs an emotional gut-punch that's all the more devastating for its being rooted in a dreadful historical reality.
Los Angeles Times by Kenneth Turan
One of those special films that broadens and deepens as it goes on.
Village Voice by Michael Atkinson
Machuca is still a half-measure. Wood is fastidious about period set design, but not much else; rather than burning with experience, the film feels opportunistic.
The Hollywood Reporter by Michael Rechtshaffen
Packs a quiet wallop.
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