Socialist Realism

Prolific Chilean director Raúl Ruiz began work on SOCIALIST REALISM in 1972, but he was forced to abandon it and flee the country the following year, when Augusto Pinochet’s CIA-backed coup toppled democratically elected left-wing president Salvador Allende. Although Ruiz died in 2011, this long-shelved project was finally restored, completed and released by his filmmaker widow, Valeria Sarmiento. Interweaving stories of factory workers and leftist intellectuals, Ruiz casts a positive but critical eye on the Allende period, defying documentary naturalism with an antic, lyrical, Godardian spirit. Tragically, the film’s cinematographer Jorge Müller Silva was detained after the coup and remains missing to this day.