MACHUCA

The third film by Chilean director Andrés Wood adapts the novel “Tres años para nacer: Historia de un verdadero machuca,” by poet and writer Eledín Parraguez, which in turn recreates an educational project launched by the government of Salvador Allende in the months before Pinochet’s coup d’état and consisting in merging together schools with high and low-class children to promote integration. The film, which distils dignity, sincerity, emotion and authenticity, focuses on the beautiful friendship that arises between two such children.

Chile, 1973, during the government of President Salvador Allende. Father McEnroe supports free admission of some proletarian kids to a private catholic school. There the bourgeois boy Gonzalo and the boy from the slum Pedro Machuca become great friends, while the conflicts on the streets lead Chile to the bloody and repressive military coup of General Augusto Pinochet, changing definitely their lives, their relationship and their country.