Do yourself a favor. Turn on the subtitles. Hit play. Let the Andes shake your soul.

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Take Pablo Larraín, arguably Chile’s most famous director. Instead of making a standard war film about the coup, he made Tony Manero (2008)—a claustrophobic portrait of a sociopath obsessed with John Travolta in 1978 Santiago. It’s not about politics on the surface, but the air of paranoia and moral rot is suffocating. Larraín followed this up with the masterpiece No (2012), starring Gael García Bernal as an ad man who uses pop culture to defeat a dictator in a referendum. It’s a true story, and it proves that sometimes, a rainbow logo is more powerful than a gun. While Larraín handles the political, Sebastián Lelio handles the human heart.

For a long time, Chilean cinema was a story of interruption. Dictatorship, economic instability, and lack of funding meant that for nearly two decades (1973–1990), the industry was essentially in exile. But today? Chile is producing films that win Oscars ( A Fantastic Woman ), shake up Cannes ( The Club ), and redefine horror ( The Wolf House ).

Whether it’s a drag queen singing in a neon-lit Santiago club or a cowboy slaughtering indigenous tribes in Patagonia, Chilean films have a singular texture: Resilience.