Movies by Luis Alarcón

Little White Dove

Little White Dove

A young working class girl falls in love with an upper class boy who is part of the plot to assassinate General Schneider, head of the Chilean Army.

Three Sad Tigers

Three Sad Tigers

A glimpse at the few days and nights in the lives of a brother and sister, Amanda and Tito, in Santiago’s semi-criminal underworld. A rambling portrait of Chilean society.

The Expropriation

The Expropriation

The film captures the activities of the inhabitants in the countryside, in southern Chile, and the CORA (Corporation for Agrarian Reform). Although the action was filmed in four days and four nights in 1971, the movie was only finished in France in 1973, after the military coup.

Secos

Secos

Chile is the only country that has privatized its waters, in favor of large corporations, to the detriment of homes in rural and urban communities. Secos is a short that makes this reality visible, through the dialog between anonymous fighters from the most heavily affected provinces, with renowned actors and actresses in the country. The objective is to activate the topic of water as a human right, to achieve in the future the recovery of this vital element as a common good for all communities and territories.

The Penal Colony

The Penal Colony

A foreign journalist arrives on a small Pacific island 200 miles off the coast of South America. Once a leper colony, the island was later transformed into a prison and then, under U.N. mandate, made into an independent republic. Yet despite democratic structures, the inhabitants--who speak a strange dialect composed of Spanish and English--still obey the old prison rules. After sending back detailed accounts of the torture and repression seen everywhere, the journalist realizes that she has fallen into the trap created for her by the island...

What Is to Be Done?

What Is to Be Done?

Mordant, self-aware, freighted with sensitivity toward Chile’s problem, wary of caricature, disposed toward consciousness of human fallibility, it is a deft blend of fiction and documentary set in the tumultuous days leading up to the election of Salvador Allende in 1970.

Caluga o Menta

Caluga o Menta

Niki and his friends are members of the marginalised underclass living on the outskirts of Santiago. During Chile's transition from dictatorship to democracy (1988-1990), they forge a path from drug- and drink-fuelled nihilism and petty crime into the world of market-driven illegality and Niki begins a seemingly predestined relationship with the middle-class "loca", Manuela. Memorable episodes and characters, quotable dialogue and a mix of earthy national portrait and surrealistic flourish make this one of the key Chilean films of the Nineties.

Tierra del fuego

Tierra del fuego

The film is based on the novel (of the same name) by the Chilean writer Francisco Coloane, and on the chronicles of the Romanian engineer Julius Popper, a nationalized Argentine and one of the principle actors in the genocide of the Selk'nam, one of the indigenous peoples who inhabited the Tierra del Fuego Archipelago.

The Chinese Shoe

The Chinese Shoe

A 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

A la sombra del sol

A la sombra del sol

Two thieves wander in the chilean desert and finally get to a small town near Bolivia. There, they try to include themselves with the townspeople but their instincts betray them and tragedy ensues. Based on a true story, this film opened one year after the chilean Coup de etat. The day after the opening, script girl Carmen Bueno and director of photography Jorge Müller were taken by police and now they are part of the list of the Desaparecidos.