Ignacio Agüero
“Widely celebrated in Latin America, the films of Ignacio Aguero are marked by his inventive approach to the history of Chile” (Cahiers du Cinema). He has been honored with many awards, and retrospectives of his films have been held around the world, including in Argentina (at BAFICI), Bolivia, France, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru and Spain.
Born in 1952, in Santiago, Chile, Agüero studied architecture, and then started film studies the year after the military coup of September 11, 1973. In 1988 he made the film that marked his career: 100 Children Waiting for a Train, awarded the First Prize for Documentary at the 1988 Havana Festival, but banned in Chile throughout the dictatorship.
While best known for his work as a documentary director, Aguero has also worked in advertising, made many telefilms, and has been an actor in numerous films, including several by Raúl Ruiz. His last two films This is the Way I Like It II, and I Never Climbed the Provincia, both won the Grand Prix at FIDMarseille (France), in 2016 and 2019 respectively. He is a film professor at the University of Chile, and participates in the Zéro en Conduite organization running film workshops for children. As of 2021, he is working on two new films.
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I Never Climbed the Provincia
Directed by Ignacio Agüero • Documentary • 2019 • 92 minutes
The film is about the relationship of a filmmaker with the corner of his house. A new building has changed the life of the neighborhood and has also interrupted the vision he had of the Provincia hill and the Andes mountain range. This...
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This is the Way I Like It 2
Directed by Ignacio Agüero • Documentary • 2016 • 87 minutes
In This is the Way I Like It – shot during Pinochet’s dictatorship – Agüero asked his colleagues about what they were filming and whom they made their work for. Thirty years later, now with Chile under a democratic rule, the question h...
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The Other Day
Directed by Ignacio Agüero • Documentary • 2013 • 120 minutes
The director follows the movement of the sun that enters through the windows of his house and illuminates various objects. He follows these movements during the day and throughout the year, discovering unsuspected associations between...
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Agustin's Newspaper
Directed by Ignacio Agüero • Documentary • 2008 • 80 minutes
El Mercurio, the oldest newspaper in Chile, has been owned and operated since 1849 by the Edwards family. Its current owner, Agustin Edwards Eastman, has controlled the journal since 1956. With editions published in Santiago and Valpar...
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My Grandmother's Mother Told My Mother
Directed by Ignacio Agüero • Documentary • 2004 • 70 minutes
The inhabitants of the Villa Alegre town, in the central zone of Chile, come together to investigate the history of their town, then put it on stage as a production. When they watch the play, they are amazed. A theatrical experience le...
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Under Construction (The Place I Was Born No Longer Exists)
Directed by Ignacio Agüero • Documentary • 2001 • 58 minutes
A neighbor suffers the demolition of neighboring houses and the construction of a building for two years. The sun stops illuminating the house and his sick mother dies. Spring is coming and with it her first grandchild. A film about th...
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Dreams of Ice
Directed by Ignacio Agüero • Documentary • 1993 • 55 minutes
Like Moby Dick’s Ishmael, a sailor takes a ship and goes from Antarctica to Spain, in a trip that transports an iceberg to Seville for the World Fair of 1992. In this voyage, mysterious things will happen, making him a victim of the hi...
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100 Children Waiting for a Train
Directed by Ignacio Agüero • Documentary • 1988 • 55 minutes
100 CHILDREN WAITING FOR A TRAIN poetically tells the story of a group of Chilean children who discover a larger reality - and a different world - through the cinema.
Each Saturday, Alicia Vega transforms the chapel of Lo Hermida into...
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This is the Way I Like It
Directed by Ignacio Agüero • Documentary • 1985 • 29 minutes
Director Ignacio Agüero interrupts the production of a film that is taking place in Chile during 1984 to ask the filmmakers what is the point of filming in Chile under the Pinochet dictatorship.
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Not to Forget
Directed by Ignacio Agüero • Documentary • 1982 • 32 minutes
In a rural site in Lonquén, a place near Santiago, and hidden inside a mining furnace, the bodies of 15 peasants were found. They had been detained by the police in 1973, a few days after the military coup. Their relatives searched for...
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Under Construction 1977
Directed by Ignacio Agüero • Documentary • 1977 • 6 minutes
A construction worker tells about his work as a plasterer in times when houses in entire neighborhoods are demolished to build new commercial zones, all as as part of a new economic structure designed by the dictatorship of Pinochet.
