Cuerpas que luchan
2020 · 3m · Chile
Directed by Catalina Ibáñez
Genres: documentary, essay film
Tones: contemplative, provocative
Matilde Urzúa recounts taking part in a feminist performance in Chile in 2018 to denounce the patriarchy. What happened after the performance shows how far equality still has to go.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
A feminist performance piece that folds back into itself via testimony—smart enough to dodge the obvious protest-doc playbook, though it risks disappearing into the very institutional frameworks it's meant to critique.
Ibáñez positions lived testimony within the formal structure of essay cinema, where the gap between performative gesture and documented consequence becomes the work itself—a considered argument about bodies, visibility, and the persistence of patriarchal aftermath.
The decision to let Urzúa's voice guide us back through the image after the performance happens is quiet but devastating—it's that temporal reversal, the aftermath given equal weight to the act, that transforms a 3-minute piece into something that stays.