Dialogue d’exilés

Shortly after the putsch on 11 September 1973, Raúl Ruiz – together with Valeria Sarmiento – left Chile for Paris. Roughly a month after arriving in France, he began shooting what would become the first Chilean exile feature: Dialogue d’exilés.

Although the title alludes to Bertolt Brecht’s 1941 Flüchtlingsgespräche, this is not a tale of two refugees from Nazi Germany meeting to discuss the current world situation. Instead it is a kaleidoscope of impressions consisting of interviews with fellow Chilean exiles talking about the daily problems of living abroad, with no perspective of what the future might bring. There are also a number of scripted scenes in which more problematic, potentially factious, questions are discussed: what image of Chile should be projected abroad, what should be expected from their host nation and its good-willing but maybe politically naive inhabitants. How can the struggle be continued and, perhaps the most contentious, what kind of mistakes were made by the Left. 

Unsurprisingly, the film wasn’t embraced by parts of the exile community. Nevertheless, Dialogue d’exilés remains one of the most equivocal works of Chilean exile cinema – an unheroic and ironic film in which things usually unsaid, are said.

– Olaf Möller

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