Chilean cinema loses one of its most important figures on the international scene. The filmmaker Sebastián Lelio, winner in 2017 of the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film with A Fantastic Woman, was found dead on Friday at his home in Las Condes, near Santiago, Chile, he was 52 years old. The family announced his passing, speaking of “health reasons” without providing further details. The Chilean prosecutor’s office said it would seek to clarify the circumstances surrounding the death.
Born in Mendoza, Argentina on March 8, 1974 but raised in Chile, Lelio had gained international notoriety with Gloria, a film that in 2013 earned its lead actress Paulina García the Silver Bear for Best Actress at the Berlinale (five years later, in 2018 Lelio would create an American remake of his film, released here under the title Gloria Bell, starring Julianne Moore).
The global breakthrough came with A Fantastic Woman, released in 2016 and featuring Daniela Vega. The film told the story of a transgender woman who faces discrimination after the death of her partner. In addition to the Oscar, the film had won the Silver Bear for Best Screenplay at the Berlinale and the Goya Award for Best Iberian-American Film in 2018.
Throughout his career, Lelio also directed Disobedience (2017), with Rachel Weisz and Rachel McAdams, The Wonder (2022), with Florence Pugh, and Voyagers (2024), with Andrew Garfield and Daisy Edgar-Jones, about the love story between the astronomer Carl Sagan and the writer and collaborator Ann Druyan.
His last directing work dates to 2025 with La Ola (still unreleased in our country), a musical inspired by the feminist movements in Chile. The director was also working on the film adaptation of the 2020 novel “Chilean Poet” by writer and poet Alejandro Zambra.
Photo by Maximilian Bühn (Wikimedia Commons license)
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