Machuca

Machuca is a 2004 internationally co-produced coming-of-age drama film co-written and directed by Andrés Wood. It stars Matías Quer, Ariel Mateluna, Manuela Martelli, and Aline Küppenheim alongside Federico Luppi.

Set in Santiago during the months leading up to the 1973 coup d'état led by General Augusto Pinochet – which overthrew Salvador Allende's socialist government – the film tells the story of two boys who attend an upper-class elementary school: Gonzalo Infante – who belongs to a rich family with a European background – and Pedro Machuca – who is poor and comes from an indigenous background. They are classmates and become friends at this English-language Catholic elite school, which Machuca attends thanks to the social integration project developed by its director, Father McEnroe.

The film is inspired by and dedicated to Father Gerardo Whelan, C.S.C. who from 1969 to 1973 was the director of Colegio Saint George (Saint George's College), the private school depicted in the movie, which the director himself attended as a boy.

Machuca was filmed in July 2003 and produced on a moderate budget of US$1,700,000. It is a joint Chilean-Spanish-British-French international co-production with support from Ibermedia. Production companies included Andrés Wood Producciones, Tornasol Films, Mamoun Hassan, Paraíso, and Chile Films. The film premiered in the Directors' Fortnight parallel section of the 57th Cannes Film Festival in May 2004. It was well received in theaters in Chile and a few other countries, but did not have notable box office success outside of Latin America.