This film, adapted from Chilean writer Hernan Rivera Letelier’s 2009 novel of the same name, is set in 1969 in the Atacama Desert, where saltpeter miners and their families work and live in precarious conditions.

Far from their world, the rest of Chile is experiencing the death of Allende and the sudden military coup by Pinochet.  Despite the hardship, one of the miners, Medardo, takes his wife Maria Magnolia and four children to the cinema every weekend to disappear into a world of cinematic storytelling. Suddenly, after a life-changing tragedy, they can afford only one ticket, so the children take it in turns to attend the Sunday screenings; one daughter, Maria Margarita, displays an astonishing gift at reciting and acting out the films of Hollywood to the rest of the family and then to her community.

The film follows her into adulthood, and into the city, where her gift as a movie teller still works its magic. With a nod to the pure nostalgia of Italian filmmaking and the film Cinema Paradiso (1988) this is a heartfelt story of escape and change combined with superb acting and cinematography. Palace.