Icarus Films announced this past week that award-winning documentary filmmaker Patricio Guzmán’s My Imaginary Country will be making its way to the domestic DVD marketplace on Jan. 24, 2023.
Guzmán’s three-part film documentary, The Battle of Chile (1975, 1976 and 1979), documented the rise to power of Chilean strongman General Augusto Pinochet, who had been instrumental in the over-throw of Marxist Salvador Allende, and the darkness that descended upon his country … 17 years of dictatorial rule by Pinochet.
This makes Guzmán something of an expert on the politics of his native country, Chile. He just happened to be in the right place and the right time beginning in 2019 when the “Estallido Social” protests began. They began as a protest of a raise in Santiago metro fares and then quickly escalated to boycotts and vandalism of stations.
The government responded by declaring a national emergency and military powers to enforce order. This in-turn triggered nagging resentment of the vestiges of the Pinochet era and before anyone knew it the fare protest quickly evolved into a national wave of protests.
Guzmán was there, he got it all … the street scenes, the interviews and the three-year-long event, the chaos of which was further compounded with the arrival of the Covid Pandemic.
My Imaginary Country opened at the Cannes Film Festival, worked the festival circuit and then Icarus Films gave it an Oscar-qualifying theatrical break in late September. The ARR for the Jan. 24, 2023 DVD release works out to 123 days.
Director Patricio Guzmán’s My Imaginary Country is presented in Spanish with English subtitles.
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