We are pleased to present this year’s film collection, created in collaboration with FIDOCS — one of the largest film festivals in Chile and Latin America. Danilo Petrovych Jorquera, Programmer at FIDOCS and a member of the DOCU/WORLD jury, shared insights into the program, its artistic vision, and the spectrum of issues it explores.
In this special focus, Docudays UA presents five recent Chilean films that explore the blurred borders between memory, resistance, and the intimate spaces of daily life. These works, shaped by distinct artistic voices and territories, offer powerful reflections on how images — whether lost, imagined, or forbidden — become tools for healing, testimony, and transformation.
Still from When the Clouds Hide the Shadow
In When the Clouds Hide the Shadow by José Luis Torres Leiva, a film that never quite gets made, becomes the setting for a meditative exploration of grief, solitude, and subtle encounters in the southernmost town of the Americas.
Still from An Oscillating Shadow
With An Oscillating Shadow, Celeste Rojas Mugica transforms a collection of archival negatives into an imaginative act of resistance, where father and daughter traverse the shadows of exile and trauma through a sensory dialogue between image and memory.
Still from Pirópolis
Still from Malqueridas
In Malqueridas, Tana Gilbert constructs a powerful collective portrait of incarcerated mothers through clandestine cellphone footage—an act of radical visibility that reclaims affect, intimacy, and presence behind bars.
Still from Socialist Realism
Finally, Socialist Realism by Raúl Ruiz and Valeria Sarmiento resurfaces half a century after being filmed, just before the 1973 coup. This recovered and completed work offers a satirical and poignant reflection on the dreams and disillusionments of Chile’s socialist experiment, bridging past and present through cinema’s own form of resistance. Together, these five films reveal the complex ways in which Chilean filmmakers use documentary language not only to witness the world but to reimagine it — layering narratives where absence becomes presence, and the political meets the profoundly personal.
This program was developed with the support of the International Renaissance Foundation. Its content does not necessarily reflect the views of the International Renaissance Foundation.
Featured image: Still from Socialist Realism
The 22nd Docudays UA is held with the financial support of the European Union, the Embassy of Sweden in Ukraine, International Renaissance Foundation. The opinions, conclusions, or recommendations do not necessarily reflect the views of the European Union, the governments, or organisations of these countries. Responsibility for the content of the publication lies exclusively with the authors and editors of the publication.
