Alejandro Fernández Almendras Getting in and out of the van. I always want to go to Valdivia. I always want to have a film in their selection, to be able to go for a whole week to watch movies, eat beef tartar, drink beer, talk with new and old friends, run into students that critique…

Camila José Donoso I started late watching good cinema: my childhood, surrounded with Disney movies and Madonna video clips, changed drastically when, at 16, I watched for the first time a film that changed my life and the way I saw the world. The movie was Saló, by Pasolini. The fact that Pasolini was that…

Christopher Murray My memory dates back to 2006. It was during my first years in college: together with a group from my class, we were getting ready to go to what those days was called VALDIFF – the Valdivia International Film Festival. Along with my classmates and greatest friends Pablo Núñez and Ignacio Rojas, we…

Claudia Huaiquimilla I participated in FICValdivia for the first time in 2012, with San Juan, a short film made with little resources, while I was in school, and where the actors were my relatives and neighbors. The day of the screening was the first time many of them came down from the countryside to go…

Cristián Jiménez When I realize the Valdivia Film Festival has celebrated 25 editions already, I feel like those old men that, when I was a kid, could not refrain from expressing their surprise every time we met: Oh my god, how big is this boy! When is this child going to stop growing? As a…

Ernesto Díaz Espinoza The Valdivia International Film Festival was my first festival experience. Kiltro, my debut full-length, was invited to the feature competition, and it was the first time I could speak directly with the audience, not only at the Q&A, but also on the streets, in bars, and at restaurants. I was impressed with…

Ignacio Agüero I have participated in the Valdivia Festival since the very beginning, in 1994 – one year before cinema turned 100 years old, and four after Pinochet left the government. Those were times of a certain beauty. There was no CNI (the secret police in the Pinochet regime) anymore; there was no dictatorship. There…

  José Luis Torres Leiva Valdivia in the fall. The first encounter. I’m on the other side of a road where time passes by quickly. It is the side of the road where one becomes aware that things end. There might have been a beginning, and it was like a dream, an illusion. The seasons…

Marialy Rivas I have a lousy memory. It is so bad that I have been to the doctor to be examined, as I believe there is something wrong with my head. Luckily, there’s nothing; stress, they say. I’m still afraid because, sometimes, I’m driving and I forget where I’m going. My memory is so bad…

Nicolás Videla The first time I traveled to the Valdivia Film Festival was in 2011, while I was still a student. That time, I saw two films (Girimunho, and O Céu Sobre os Ombros), whose treatment of the intimate, and documentary representation ethics prematurely influenced my micropolitical audiovisual work, affecting my first movie (Naomi Campbel,…

Niles Atallah Valdivia is to me an essential festival, a dear festival. I feel it has played a fundamental role in the Chilean cinematographic scene, not only stimulating the development and circulation of local cinema, but also creating ties with cinema from the rest of the world. Valdivia has been a bridge to show Chilean…

Pepa San Martín We were filming Turistas, by Alicia Scherson. I was assistant director, and one night, I told her and Macarena López an idea I had for a script. This set in motion the process for La Ducha, which I premiered in 2010, in the international short film section. It was the first time…

Sebastián Brahm In July 2004, I had to go to Valdivia for ten days to finish a project to develop a feature film we had obtained with Bruno Bettati. Just like the week I had spent there six months prior, in a gorgeous January, I would stay at a student hostel in Teja Island, where…

Sebastián Lelio Valdivia has always felt like a celebration of what has happened to us – of the attempts, the hits, the adventures without a clear destination, of those powerful films, and also the failures: of everything we have been, all of us. I was able to premiere my first short films at the Valdivia…

Tomás Welss If I want to speak about and remember Valdivia, I have to go back, travel, and start over. At the beginning of the 90s, I lived in Barcelona, and my understanding of Chile was hazy, although closer to praise and exaltation, the consequence of distance and time. During a visit by my father…

Vivienne Barry At FICValdivia, I attended the premieres of unforgettable films that have an important place in heart. I especially remember the striking documentary Estadio Nacional, by Carmen Luz Parot, and the good reception for Cristián Jiménez’s short film El Tesoro de los Caracoles. There, I also witnessed the first forays of young Chilean filmmakers,…