"Battle of Chile" director Patricio Guzman dies

Chilean documentary filmmaker Patricio Guzman, best known for the film Battle for Chile, has died in Paris at the age of 85. This was reported by AFP with reference to his wife. AFP notes that Guzman was “one of the most prominent representatives of the film industry in Latin America.”.

Patricio Guzman was born in Santiago in 1941. Since the early 1970s, he has made documentary films. After the 1973 military coup that brought Augusto Pinochet to power in Chile, Patricio Guzman was arrested. In relation to him played a simulated execution. The same year he was released from custody, after which he left the country. In the following years he lived in Cuba, Spain and France.

The Battle of Chile, a film trilogy about Pinochet's seizure of power, was released between 1975 and 1979. Later, he made several more documentaries, mostly dedicated to Chile. Many of them have won prizes at prestigious international film festivals, including Cannes and Berlin. The Guardian described Patricio Guzman as a "passionate documentary filmmaker" who made "merciless but poetic films exploring the impact of the Pinochet regime on Chile.".

Jana Christmas