Machuca

Santiago, Chile, 1973. A reserved boy from an upper-middle-class family, Gonzalo is warily edging towards adolescence. But his ordinary hardships, joys and rites of passage are charged with inordinate tension. The country drifts towards civil war as Gonzalo's own family life - tempered by political and personal differences - heads towards disintegration.
When his exclusive private school begins offering scholarships to poor indigenous boys, Gonzalo befriends one of the boys, Pedro Machuca, and subsequently Machuca's neighbour, the young girl Silvana. Through their friendships, Gonzalo discovers the thrilling but wildly complicated world outside his own sheltered life. But just as the children begin to get a taste of one another's worlds, the escalating political tensions erupt, capsizing the country and leaving them to face moral tests far beyond their capacities.
"There is no separating the personal from the political in [Machuca]. This film's determination to tell a story of profound societal dislocation in intensely human terms favours neither part of the equation... One of those special films that broadens and deepens as it goes on." - LA Times
D/P/S Andres Wood P Gerardo Herrero, Mamoun Hassan S Roberto Brodsky, Mamoun Hassan WS Latido L Spanish w/English subtitles TD 35mm/col/2004/115mins
Andres Wood was born in Chile in 1965. His films include [Loco Fever] (2001), [Revenge] (1999), [Football Stories] (1997).