Radio Atacama
2014 · 14m · España
Directed by Víctor Cerdán
Genres: documentary, drama, surrealism
Tones: contemplative, melancholic, surreal
In 1996 the Chilean authorities evacuate the town Pedro de Valdivia, situated in the middle of the Atacama desert, due to the high contamination of a nearby saltpetre plant; Benito Paften remains alone during thirteen years, with the company of a radio receiver, and extreme solitude provokes that the old man imagines invisible worlds to evade reality.
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Cerdán takes the most obvious premise—lonely old man, desert, radio—and refuses to punch it up with narrative fireworks; the surrealism creeps in sideways, which is either restrained brilliance or a missed opportunity for genuine weirdness, and I'm genuinely unsure which.
This is a formally rigorous work that situates itself clearly in the lineage of experimental documentary and magical realism, using the radio as both literal object and Brechtian device to collapse the boundary between witness and witnessed, solitude and collective memory.
The decision to keep Benito's imagined worlds almost imperceptible—layered into sound design and peripheral mise-en-scène rather than foregrounded—is what makes thirteen years of isolation feel lived rather than merely described.