The Wandering Soap Opera

Started by Chilean experimental master Raúl Ruiz in 1990 and completed posthumously by his wife and collaborator Valeria Sarmiento in 2017, this dreamy, interconnected series of vignettes spoof on telenovela conventions and reflect Ruiz’s complicated feelings upon returning to his native Chile after more than 15 years away. Shot in gorgeous Super 16mm, this gloriously political sendup of the telenovela—which Ruiz called the best lens to understand “Chilean reality” at the end of Augusto Pinochet’s dictatorship—includes a man with raw meat for muscles, a poet accused of plagiarism, and a deadly earthquake. The result is a truly Ruizian experience, a new film from a dead man.