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Cristián Sánchez

Cristián Sánchez

Directing

Biography

Luis Cristián Sánchez Garfias (Santiago, June 19, 1951) is a Chilean director, screenwriter and film scholar. He studied, like several other filmmakers of his generation, at the School of Communication Arts of the Universidad Católica before the dictatorship. His films, all low-budget, have generally had little public diffusion, both because of their airtight content and because of the scarce support in the official distribution circuits. They have, however, enjoyed a positive reception at international festivals in Havana, Berlin, Biarritz and Nantes. It can be said that their cinema is "underground"; it is, in their own words, "a cinema of affective image, or of image-pulsion, in the manner of Buñuel". In his work he seeks to reveal "mythical relationships", since, in his opinion, "to reach a higher degree of complexity, cinema must deal with myth". He proclaims his affinity with what Raúl Ruiz does, although he differentiates himself from him - he says - because his cinema "is baroque" while his is more inclined towards an "asceticism of the image, and a more classical structure, of linear narration".

Known For

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N/A

A 14-year-old upper-class girl keeps the painful secret of being sexually abused by her stepfather throughout her childhood. Manuela will rebel and begin a process that lead her to move forward.

Solita camino

2012
The Chinese Shoe
6.1

A taxi driver finds Marlene, a provincial woman, lost in a brothel. Immediately he decides to help her out and take her at his place. Little by little, his paternal protection turns into a bizarre passion

The Chinese Shoe

1979
Vías paralelas
8.0

A former public-services worker wants to return to his job. In the attempt, he meets wandering people, who seek "parallel ways" of survival in a chaotic socio-political context in Chile, after the 1973 Coup d'état .

Vías paralelas

1975
With the Feet on the Ground
2.8

A film director is attacked in his home by two subjects who have usurped the physical resemblance and the name of an actor in his films, long dead. A hypnotic journey, creepy revelations, sorcerers and vegan zombies.

With the Feet on the Ground

2024
Tiempos malos
7.3

Ángel, a teenager whose father is murdered in a slum, leaves high school and participates in criminal activities.

Tiempos malos

2015
The Holy Office
N/A

A writer, who wants to make a film about today's Chile, departs from the usual forms of filming to grasp the mystery of things. He approaches the desired film, in the middle of a relationship crisis, caused by Marcy, a disturbing woman-child who drags him into a fascinating crazy-love relationship. And because the writer understands that true creation involves detaching himself from any subjection to the practical world and accepting the catastrophic as a form of secular holiness, he performs, in the end, an act of immense generosity.

The Holy Office

2025
Cautiverio feliz
6.0

A young Hispanic-Creole captain spends six months captive among the Mapuche, learning that the supposed “barbarians” were more human than the “civilized” ones.

Cautiverio feliz

1998
No image
8.0

A sleepwalking psychology student wants to recover an unknown image of herself. Like a lost soul, she search her image among the dead. Only then she will fulfill her wish.

El cumplimiento del deseo

1994
Der Radfahrer von San Cristóbal
8.0

A cyclist decides to go for everything and win the 'Tour of Chile' Race, so he can finance the medical treatment for his ill mother with the prize. However, he must soon recognize that the sporting event is corrupted by commercial and marketing interests, in addition to the political goals of the military regime.

Der Radfahrer von San Cristóbal

1988
Take a Spin in the Air
N/A

A school boy who excels in math but loves art; a fetishistic businessman; and a compulsive car cleaner whose hobby is to write plays, are attracted, as a siren song, to a large house made into a cultural center. There, a woman, who seems to be a fortune-teller, urges them to look for a centennial tree planted over an ancient indigenous ceremonials site.

Take a Spin in the Air

2020
El otro round
N/A

"Dinamita" Araya is living the crudeness of normality in an uneventful life since he retired from boxing. A chance encounter with a woman brings him back to life. The other round now takes place on life itself.

El otro round

1984
Los deseos concebidos
6.5

Erre, a teenager that lives with his uncle, his aunt and an almost absent sister, is erased from the roster on his school. From then on, he just wanders in places where the strange is barely hidden under an imitation of the ordinary.

Los deseos concebidos

1982
La promesa del retorno
N/A

An unhappy art student feels deeply disturbed and is unable to sleep. One morning, she hears the trumpeting of an eagle that seems to herald unusual times, which is further materialized with the finding of a copy of The inmaculate conception, the book by Paul Eluard and André Breton, in her apartment's incinerator.

La promesa del retorno

2020
The Inner Flame
N/A

A filmmaker arrives at the house where a friend disappeared. She inquires about her with a man who holds a candle in his hand; with an acolyte who enters people’s dreams; with a forgetful woman, with a denier, and manages to escape the seduction of a satanic group, but is captivated by a demon.

The Inner Flame

2025
Voy y vuelvo
N/A

With the Kafkaesque phrase "he who does not seek does not find, but he who does not seek is found", Sánchez begins an episodic story scripted and filmed in only 27 hours where there is virtually a single location that resembles, in a very stylized way, a prison. From there, Alejandro, a young lumpen, interacts with various characters that burst into the space, generating situations that allude to his minimal survival, reselling or exchanging objects. Voy y vuelvo is verbally organized with an anthropological approach, with the same interest of the director for the Mapuche dialect in Cautiverio Feliz and in Date una vuelta en el aire, and from there incorporates elements of popular culture and the notion of purgatory as a recurring figure.

Voy y vuelvo

2023
No image
N/A

No description available.

La Ermita del Socorro

1974
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An apparently superficial geologist leaves a wayward history student and proposes to a nudist neighbour.

Cuídate del agua mansa

1995
Esperando a Godoy
N/A

A group of left-wing intellectuals take over a building with the purpose of forming a Ministry of Culture, however, the workers oppose the takeover. Intellectuals and workers establish a coexistence pact while waiting for Godoy, a union boss. After conflicts over ideological differences about culture, the takeover dissolves, just when Godoy appears with a totally elitist and apolitical discourse.

Esperando a Godoy

2025
Marihuana
N/A

Institutional documentary about the use of Cannabis in 70s Chile.

Marihuana

1975
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N/A

Pancho and José Santos, bandits from Teno, known by their fondness of tearing their enemies' faces, meet after four years for another robbery. After re-telling their adventures, they cross paths with Saturnino who has old accounts to settle with them.

Camino de sangre

2003