The Andes cordillera – the thick spinal range of mountains that extends the length of Chile – takes on a symbolic significance in Patricio Guzmán’s poetic and far-reaching portrait of the country he left more than 40 years before. The mountain range both separates and protects the country from the rest of the world, says Guzmán; the country’s topography is an extended metaphor for its rocky political realities. It’s a highly personal documentary: in addition to focusing on the mountains, Guzmán revisits his childhood home, now derelict, and explores his own archive footage of the 1973 coup d’état that prompted his relocation to France.
