José Luis Torres Leiva

When Clouds Hide the Shadow (2025)

Maria travels to Puerto Williams to star in a movie. But the film crew won't be able to arrive due to a strong storm. Alone, she'll seek help for severe back pain, which will lead her to discover life in the southernmost city in the world and a pending sto ...

A Dark Light (2024)

Jorge becomes obsessed when he discovers that he has the same name as a young man who died. Upon investigating, he discovers that they also share an obvious physical resemblance. To Josefina, the young man's mother, the encounter with this man awakens a gh ...

Alicia Dreams of a Lighthouse (2021)

Part of the project for the new feature film that José Luis Torres Leiva is currently preparing. The short film describes the creative process and the images that come to a writer as she reflects on the figure of lighthouses as insular guides and as a sou ...

Against all the evils of the world (2021)

Everything resides in the mind of Lois, schizophrenic artist and a strong follower of Virginia Woolf, who says, "There is no gate, no lock, no bolt that you can impose on the freedom of my mind." The protagonist gives life to the story, confronting his luc ...

Winter: Images of Contemporary Chilean Architecture (2020)

This exhibition presents projects of relevance to contemporary Chilean architecture such as the reconstruction of the Pereira Palace in the center of Santiago and buildings that inhabit nature, located in the Atacama Desert and Torres del Paine, through th ...

Ni juntos, ni solos (2020)

Amparo is 18 years old and lives in the city of Iquique, in northern Chile. Among confusion, she must deal with the discovery of her father's secret life, feel love for the first time, decide whether to leave her hometown to study, and even realize that pe ...

Death Will Come and Shall Have Your Eyes (2019)

Two women who have spent their whole lives together must deal with the illness affecting one of them. The sick woman decides not to have treatment and they move into a cabin in the woods to wait for the day that death will come into their lives. The situat ...

Perros sin cola (2019)

Rosario is a wandering teenager who believes that her mother, does not really love her and she's apparently right. The young woman has found refuge in the dance and in her friend Jonathan, a young street vendor who helps raise money for the wedding of his ...

The Guru (2019)

In the south of Chile on the Chiloé Island, Carlos Ruiz works as an operator in an industrial cannery. He is one of the cogs that makes the machine turn, except when he is a machine himself, like when he delivers blows on the punching-ball. A machine that ...

About Things That Happened to Me (2018)

Based on the book by author Marcelo Matthey, this short film narrates his own life in a style reminiscent of school compositions. His constant strolls through streets, houses and beaches are recorded in notes of what he saw, felt or thought during these wa ...

Enigma (2018)

Ten years after her daughter was the victim of a hate crime, brutally beaten in the streets of Santiago for being a lesbian, Nancy is asked to participate in an unsolved mysteries TV show that will recreate the incident. Nancy, a hairdresser who has worked ...

Absence (2017)

A love triangle between a pioneer female writer; her husband -a retired military official-and the love of her life, the painter Moritz Rugendas, with whom she maintains an epistolary relationship for 10 years, with few personal encounters. ...

Rey (2017)

In the nineteenth century, a French adventurer sets off to establish a kingdom in the inhospitable South of Chile, uniting the feared Mapuche under him. The response of the Chilean army is devastating. ...

Nada pertenece a la memoria (2017)

Pedro Chaskel, director, editor and post-producer. Based on domestic memories, and accompanied by representative fragments,tries to reconstruct the most important works of his career and motivations. ...

Ana's Dream (2017)

Stark formal choices counterbalance profound emotions and vulnerability in this poignant lover's goodbye. ...

Los soñadores (2016)

A film of people who daydream. A special dream that marked something in their lives, either because it was premonitory or prophetic, because it took them to a lost or forgotten place of their childhood or because he faced them with a fear that they believe ...

The Winds Know That I'm Coming Back Home (2016)

Looking for extras and locations, a filmmaker settles on Chiloé, the second largest island off the coast of Chile. He does auditions, but mainly listens patiently to the stories of young and old people. As an outsider, he cautiously searches for the soul ...

Adios amigo mío, sin gestos, sin palabras (2015)

The title comes from Sergei Yesenin's last poem before comiting suicide. Using Virginia Woolf's last letters as a base, this film is meditation on the power of the word and its undertsanding and the the last moments before saying "goodbye". ...

Land and Shade (2015)

Alfonso is an old farmer who has returned home to tend to his son, who is gravely ill. He rediscovers his old house, where the woman who was once his wife still lives, with his daughter-in-law and grandson. The landscape that awaits him resembles a wastela ...

Tea Time (2014)

More than sixty years after leaving high school, former classmates Alicia, Gema, Angelica, Ximena and Maria Teresa are still devoted to their regular catch-ups in which they exchange gossip and reminiscences over elaborately presented afternoon teas. Impec ...

Aurora (2014)

After reading in the newspaper that a newborn baby was found in a dumpster, a teacher becomes obsessed with giving it a proper burial. ...

See and Listen (2014)

Blind and deaf people converse, question, surprise and educate each others. ...

11 Habitaciones en Antártica (2013)

Leo Quinteros music is the base to this film in which filmmakers, actors and actresses and other creators reunite in different hotel rooms. ...

What Is This Story and How Does It End? (2013)

A prominent Chilean documentary director shares his family album with the film editor of his late works. A review of one hundred photographs and a quiet conversation will rise to memories of the films of one of the most personal filmmakers. ...

Thursday Till Sunday (2012)

As she and her family embark on a short vacation, a young Chilean girl slowly comes to the realization that her parents might be splitting up. ...

By the Fire (2012)

Daniel and Alejandra, a working class couple in their late 30s, move to the countryside near the Andes Mountains to begin the next chapter of their life together. Alejandra is ill, and Daniel looks after her, his soul mate. He scratches out a living doing ...

Copia imperfecta: para Raúl Ruiz (2012)

A beautiful homage to Raúl Ruiz, the great Chilean filmmaker who died last summer. ...

Verano (2011)

During one hot summer day, little things happen to the visitors and workers of an old thermal resort in southern Chile. Julieta, Francisco, Isa, Rodrigo, Ignacio, Mariana, Muriel, Gabriela, Eliseo, Norma, Alejandra and Claudio experience the long vacation ...

Lucia (2011)

Lucía is a young woman who works as a seamstress in a factory and lives with her father in an old house in Santiago, Chile. The film occurs in December 2006 during the weeks that take place from the ex-dictator Pinochet's funeral to Christmas Eve. Through ...

Ocaso (2010)

Rafael, an old butler of a decadent farmhouse, lives with his landlord in that space. He develops a series of actions and daily routines that resume a life and a glorious family past. These actions and gestures will become the only way of sustaining that h ...

Three Weeks Later (2010)

Initially the film is part of the project "8,8" by Chilean artist Fernando Prats. Recorded for 8 days in the area most affected by the February 2010 earthquake in Chile, it narrates a journey that subjectively crosses all the images and sounds experienced ...

Un minuto de silencio (2010)

Primer día de invierno (2010)

The Sky, the Earth and the Rain (2008)

Ana, Verónica, Marta, and Toro are four lonely people who live an unadventurous and quiet existence in southern Chile. They are with each other without the need of using words, trying to save themselves in a stealthy and extreme way. In order not only of ...

Trance (2008)

Ten segments linked to a primary idea: an evocation of the early cinema images. ...

The Time that Rests (2007)

The time that Rests is a contemplative look at the daily life of the José Horwitz Barak Hospital, one of the oldest psychiatric facilities in Chile, located in the north of Santiago. It is not a film about madness, but about the passing of time in a certa ...

Women Workers Leaving the Factory (2005)

An atmospheric portrait of four women who leave the factory where they work to go to the beach. ...

El mal (2004)

The clouds over a couple give rise to a story about the small everyday gestures of a world that stops around the disturbing spaces of everyday life. ...

Los ojos abiertos (2004)

Empezando de cero (2004)

No Place in Anywhere (2003)

No Place in Anywhere can deal with many issues. It is a personal journey through image and time. It is the portrait of the "La Matriz" neighborhood in Valparaíso. It is the encounter between reality and fiction. It is the constant search to find a truth w ...

No tengo nada que decir (2003)

Formal exercise on the use of the foreground and the configuration of the world through detail. ...

Confesiones de un caballo suicida (2002)

Collage based on the texts and lives of Diane Arbus, Jean Eustache, Robert Walser, Alejandra Pizarnik, Franz Kafka and Carmen Jung. ...

Como me da la gana II (2016)

Just like in 1985, today Ignacio Agüero is back interrupting filmmakers during shooting, but not to ask what he did thirty years ago, but to find out what is purely cinematographic in what they film. These conversations are related to images in the direct ...