Machuca

Set in Santiago, Chile, in 1973, Machuca follows two eleven-year-old boys from opposite sides of the city. Gonzalo Infante comes from a comfortable, well-off family, while Pedro Machuca lives in a poor shantytown only a few streets away. When the headmaster of Gonzalo's elite Catholic school, Father McEnroe, opens its doors to boys from the shantytown, the two become classmates and, eventually, friends. Their bond develops against a backdrop of deepening political and social division in the country, as the government of Salvador Allende nears its end and the two boys are drawn into the turmoil around them.

The film was directed by Andrés Wood, who wrote the screenplay with Roberto Brodsky and Eliseo Altunaga, and it was produced by Gerardo Herrero, Mamoun Hassan and Wood. Matías Quer and Ariel Mateluna play the two boys, with Aline Küppenheim, Ernesto Malbrán, Federico Luppi and Manuela Martelli among the credited cast of thirty-four. A co-production involving Chile, Spain, France and the United Kingdom, it had a modest budget of about two million dollars.

Audience response has been consistently positive: it holds a rating of 7.7 out of 10 on IMDb from around thirteen thousand votes, and 7.7 out of 10 on TMDB from a much smaller number of votes. The film critics' rating stands at 7.7 out of 10 from thirty-eight reviews, placing professional and audience assessments closely in line with each other.