Santiago Rising (2021)

(89 mins)

Filmed during protests which engulfed Chile in late 2019, Santiago Rising meets social movements, protesters and ordinary people in their struggle for economic equality and human rights, in the face of a violent police crackdown. It charts the build-up to the historic vote in October 2020 that saw Chileans vote for a new constitution to replace the one imposed during the dictatorship. Although the odds are stacked against them, Chileans find strength in unity as they fight to overcome Pinochet’s enduring legacy. We see the joy, colour, diversity, and energy of a people who feel that they have finally awakened from a long slumber and are making their way to a hopeful future.

On 18 October 2019, the people of Chile rose up in rebellion against the ruling class as they had not done since the time of the dictatorship. The spark that lit the fuse was the rise in the price of an underground ticket by 30 pesos. But this represented merely the last drop in a glass that was overflowing with the working class’ accumulated rage after years of abuse and suffocation through austerity and debt. The protests ignited countrywide street protests at the general rise in the cost of living, rabid privatisation and the crass inequality in the country.

Film-maker Nick MacWilliam, who lived in Chile for four years, captures the euphoria, that sense of the people regaining power in the way they had in 1970 when socialist Salvador Allende became president. Through interviews with activists, he charts the rise of its different elements: Chile’s students, who pioneered the use of social media-friendly flash mobs during their protests against the privatisation of education; Chile’s inspirational women’s movement brings together older second-wave feminists with thousands of young women in a multiplicity of campaigns; Urban protesters have also made common cause with Mapuches, an indigenous group who make up 9 per cent of the population of Chile, who have suffered police violence for years.