SELECTION OF CRITICS:

“’Salvador Allende” is not a simple biography. Above all, it is a poem that comes from deep in the soul of the filmmaker, to pay homage to the Chilean president.”

LE MONDE DIPLOMATIQUE, José Maldavsky, Parigi, settembre 2004

"With Salvador Allende, Patricio Guzman’s material is triple. He weaves the images from the archives, the encounters with the characters and the intimate material of his own memories and of his own life (...) Each portrait is also a self-portrait (...) Along with Raymond Depardon, Walter Salles or Michael Moore, the opening –up of documentary cinema started three years ago by the Official Selection at the Cannes Festival confirms the vitality of this cinematographic form as opposed to fiction.”

L'HUMANITE, Parigi, 14 maggio 2004

“There was the memory of the nightmare... now there is the memory of the dream (...) Patricio Guzmán shows ‘that radiant dream’ of the then-young filmmaker and of all the people who put Salvador Allende in power in 1970 (...) Guzmán finds the principal material for his film in archive shots from his own resources as a filmmaker, plus some shots by the Hollander Joris Ivens (...) The dream remains intact.”

LIBERATION, Parigi, 13 maggio 2004

“Inspired and moving documentary about President Allende. An elegy of the fate of the Chilean people that can leave no one indifferent.”

LES INROCKUPTIBLES, Jean-Baptiste Morain, Parigi, 8 settembre 2004

“A sharp and rigorous documentary. An occasion for recalling or using as instruction when the process against Pinochet is reopened.”

LE CANARD ENCHAINÉ, Jean-Paul Grousset, Parigi, 8 settembre 2004

"Patricio Guzmán’s last journey through space to the amnesia that is the history of Chile is, without a doubt, one of the most thrilling of this documentary filmmaker, with many rigorous and stirring sequences (...) A captivating film (...) The originality of the film lies in Guzmán’s sensitive evolution with his own art (...). Without being sensationalist, the film stages utopia and favors the myth.”

CAHIER DU CINEMA, Thierry Méranger, Parigi, settembre 2004

"How nice to let oneself be carried away by Patricio Guzmán’s images!"

LE COURIER, Emmilie Valentin, Parigi, 2 ottobre 2004

"With Salvador Allende, Patricio Guzmán exhumes that radiant dream of equality and justice that encarnated, for an entire generation of Chileans, that revolutionary and pacifist dream (...) Guzmán gives a shake to our amnesia.”

PARIS-OBS-SUPLEMENTO, Richard Cannavo, Parigi, 9-15 settembre 2004

"The film is moving, elegant, powerful. Behind the cadence of editing, the hand of a maestro can be seen, in this work of cinema embarked on the beautiful battle against forgetting (...) It is a documentary of extraordinary evocative strength, an unusual exercise in introspective documentary film, in which Guzmán commemorates, from the corners of his most intimate memory, the moments of glory of President Allende and the meeting point that his figure had with the dreamt-of hope of a fusion between full socialism and full democracy.”

EL PAIS, Angel Fernández-Santos, Madrid, 14 maggio 2004

"Like Salvador Allende, Patricio Guzmán has dedicated his life to Chile, his country. It seems entirely normal, then, that he might consecrate a documentary to his political hero, martyr of September 11, 1973. More than a simple portrait, it is an inspired film in which Guzmán manages to take a considerable distance in relation to the subject. Taking archive images, survivor’s testimonies and a never-before-heard political analysis, he shows the enthusiasm that Allende’s victory in 1970 represented for an entire people, without eluding to the errors in judgment or, above all, showing the political and economical vise grip in which Allende found himself imprisoned. A very rich film, at times quite emotive, that breaks the taboo of silence about a beacon personality of the twentieth century.”

ZURBAN, Parigi, 13 maggio 2004

"’A country without documentary films is like a family without a photo album,’ says Patricio Guzmán, Chilean filmmaker dedicated after 30 years to tell the history of his country in order to complete its memory. After ‘The Pinochet Case’ (2001), he now shows the antagonistic portrait of Salvador Allende. It is pitting light against the shadows, civilization and legality against ‘the brutality of dictatorship’ in an antithesis in the style of Victor Hugo (...) It offers a very hagiographic biography from the point of view of the president’s sympathizers (the opponents, especially North Americans, are clearly the villains), something which doesn’t impede it from being captivating and nuanced within the revolutionary field.”

LE FIGARO, Parigi, 13 maggio 2004