1976

Multiply awarded Hitchcockian paranoia-thriller about a middleclass housewife whose sudden political commitment faces consequences in Pinochet’s Chile in 1976.

Aline Küppenheim is magnificent in the role as Carmen, the chain-smoking middle-aged wife of a doctor who half-heartedly monitors the renovation of the family’s beach house, and does not concern herself particularly much about the state of affairs in the country. But when the family’s priest asks her for help in secretly caring for an injured young man, Carmen takes a step into uncharted territory. The actress Manuela Martelli’s directorial debut is an impressive, stylistically-sure character study and portrayal of the dictatorship’s brutal mechanisms. The completely female perspective here differs from the majority of the films previously made about Chile’s Pinochet Era. Won the award for best debut at the London Film Festival.

• Johan Blomqvist