Nearly 50 years ago, the Chilean director Patricio Guzmán created a three-part documentary titled The Battle of Chile, which gave a detailed account of the civil unrest and the coup that tore the country apart during the 1970s. Now Guzmán once again turns his lens on protest in the country he was forced to leave as a result of his films and his political activities. My Imaginary Country documents a new kind of grassroots protest, one in which every participant is also a citizen journalist; in which police and army atrocities are captured by a hundred phone cameras. The message is ultimately one of hope: for Chileans, this time at least, protest has resulted in real and meaningful changes.
