
Directing
Cristián Sánchez
Born
1951-06-19 (75)
Place of birth
Santiago
Known for
Directing
Credits
42 titles
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 mann…
Known for
6.0A 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
NRNew Love is a non-linear film that consist in succession of sequences showing the world of young people of the late sixties.Deeply focused on the hippie culture in Chile.
New Love
1968
NRAnnelie, an anthropologist dedicated to mortuary rites, investigates her grandfather's suicide during the dictatorship. In a mansion that was once a production facility and later a torture center, she joins forces with a journalist and a mathematician to search for a fragment of film that her grandfather hid, which documents a crime.
Hidden Currents
2026
NRA 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
Cristián, a filmmaker, dives into a first-person meditation about the secret ties that bind the situations in his movies. Populated by trivial and truly mysterious events, his images unfold in disquieting worlds, dominated always by impossible desires. Compelled to break free and become nomads, his heroes find in the worlds they travel, all that makes up his true being.
El paso del héroe y el círculo de los deseos
2011
NRInstitutional documentary about the use of Cannabis in 70s Chile.
Marihuana
1975
Film credits
Behind the camera
6.0A 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
6.0A 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
NRAnnelie, an anthropologist dedicated to mortuary rites, investigates her grandfather's suicide during the dictatorship. In a mansion that was once a production facility and later a torture center, she joins forces with a journalist and a mathematician to search for a fragment of film that her grandfather hid, which documents a crime.
Hidden Currents
2026
NRAnnelie, an anthropologist dedicated to mortuary rites, investigates her grandfather's suicide during the dictatorship. In a mansion that was once a production facility and later a torture center, she joins forces with a journalist and a mathematician to search for a fragment of film that her grandfather hid, which documents a crime.
Hidden Currents
2026
NRA 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
NRA 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
Cristián, a filmmaker, dives into a first-person meditation about the secret ties that bind the situations in his movies. Populated by trivial and truly mysterious events, his images unfold in disquieting worlds, dominated always by impossible desires. Compelled to break free and become nomads, his heroes find in the worlds they travel, all that makes up his true being.
El paso del héroe y el círculo de los deseos
2011
NRInstitutional documentary about the use of Cannabis in 70s Chile.
Marihuana
1975
2.8A 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
2.8A 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
NRWith 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
NRWith 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
NRA young university student tells us the experience of become pregnant, without having a family or a stable economic situation. She must abandon her studies and her job to adapt to the new situation while avoiding pressure from her partner who forces her to have an abortion. Short film made by students of the School of Communication Arts of the Catholic University of Chile.
Cosita
1971
An apparently superficial geologist leaves a wayward history student and proposes to a nudist neighbour.
Cuídate del agua mansa
1995
An apparently superficial geologist leaves a wayward history student and proposes to a nudist neighbour.
Cuídate del agua mansa
1995
An apparently superficial geologist leaves a wayward history student and proposes to a nudist neighbour.
Cuídate del agua mansa
1995
NR"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
NR"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
NR"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
6.1A 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
6.1A 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
NRAn 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
NRAn 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
NRAn 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
NRA 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
NRA 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
NRA kimche, a Mapuche wise man, arrives at a clinic where patients are demanding more medication. But it is all an illusion: they have been killed by a weküfü, an invisible evil entity. The kimche leads them to Miñche Mapu, where spirits decide who can return to life.
The Invisible Land
2026
NRA kimche, a Mapuche wise man, arrives at a clinic where patients are demanding more medication. But it is all an illusion: they have been killed by a weküfü, an invisible evil entity. The kimche leads them to Miñche Mapu, where spirits decide who can return to life.
The Invisible Land
2026
NRA 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
NRA 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
NRA 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
NRA 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
NRA 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
6.5Erre, 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
6.5Erre, 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
No synopsis available yet.
La Ermita del Socorro
1974
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
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
In a parallel universe, where a sauna bath represents the policies of ancient Rome, the poet Gómez Rojas and a group of Socialist men try to free their fellow prisoners from the judge, tyrant and teacher, Astorquiza.
Así hablaba Astorquiza
1978
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

