La Frontera

This absorbing first feature explores one man's internal exile in a country whose recent history has known the worst of political repression. Ramiro (Contreras), a Santiago teacher, is banished to a remote coastal community for putting his name to a public denunciation of the military authorities' abduction of one of his colleagues. His enforced sojourn leaves him under the restrictive care of the local police; yet the unexpected resonance of his encounters with the locals - Maite (Laso), a fugitive from Franco's Spain with her own troubled past, and Buzo (Bernales), a half-crazed diver - prompts him to rethink his life and his political commitment. With its wry treatment of the prisoner's bumbling captors and an uplifting climactic coup to savour, we witness a journey of discovery from a national cinema where the term 'political film' still means something.