Cuerpo Celeste

In the shadow of Pinochet’s crumbling dictatorship, a teenage girl’s idyll is upended in this seamless Chilean gem.

It’s New Year’s Eve, 1990, and Chile’s military regime stands on the brink of collapse. Fifteen-year-old Celeste spends quiet days with family and friends in a coastal town near the Atacama Desert. The future seems bright—until an unexpected event strikes, and her mother falls into depression. Celeste’s world is turned upside down, and when she later returns for a solar eclipse, everything has changed. A contemplative story about lingering traces and the ambiguity of memory—yet also a radiant portrait of a girl’s all-too-rapid coming of age.

• Niclas Goldberg