alr

Jackal of Nahueltoro
(El Chacal de Nahueltoro)

Directed by Miguel Littin.
With Nelson Villagra, Shenda Román, Marcelo Romo.
Chile, 1969, DCP, black & white, 95 min.
Spanish with English subtitles.
DCP source: Chilean Cinematheque

Miguel Littín’s now legendary debut feature is a crucial work of the New Chilean Cinema, a transformational movement that ushered an urgently realist and political imperative into Chilean filmmaking. Based on the true story of an impoverished drifter whose seemingly inexplicable cold-blooded murder of a widow and her five young children shocked the nation and set in motion a fierce debate about penal reform, El Chacal de Nauheltoro revisits the crime to ask penetrating questions about the class system and responsibility of the state towards its citizens. Following the tragic story of the killer’s difficult life as an abused orphan who never receives an education, El Chacal convincingly insists on holding to task the sociocultural conditions that shaped a life lost to indolence, alcohol and dark forces and that can push one to commit the most heinous of crimes. The cinematography of celebrated cameraman Héctor Rios Henríquez gives haunting life to the landscapes whose vast indifference to the gripping human drama speak to the larger vision of the film.

Part of film series

Read more

Remapping Latin American Cinema: Chilean Film/Video 1963 – 2013

Current and upcoming film series

Read more

Música de Câmara. The Cinema of Rita Azevedo Gomes

Read more

From the Harvard Film Archive Collection …

Read more

Chile Año Cero / Chile Year Zero

Read more

People and their Virtue. Two Films by Wang Bing

Read more

Trenque Lauquen by Laura Citarella

Read more

I Heard It Through the Grapevine with James Baldwin

Read more

Filmmaker, Guest Worker: Zelimir Zilnik’s Expatriates

Read more

Adachi Masao’s Revolution+1

Read more

Out of the Ashes – The US-ROK Security Alliance & the Emergence of South Korean Cinema