Valeria
2020 · 10m · Chile
Directed by Luis Durán Gutiérrez
Genres: documentary
Tones: contemplative, provocative, tender
Valeria is a mother with severe disability, who lives in Parral, and who will undertake a trip to Santiago, to participate in the historic 8M march, with the objective of making visible her struggle, and that of many women, to exercise their right to live motherhood.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
Everyone expects disability docs to be inspiration porn or trauma theater, so watching Valeria treat her own body as unremarkable infrastructure for political action—just another fact of the journey—is genuinely disruptive in a way that doesn't announce itself.
Durán Gutiérrez positions this within the lineage of feminist documentary testimony, but what elevates it is the formal restraint: letting the mundane logistics of access become the narrative spine rather than sentimentalizing either the mother or the march.
The decision to film Valeria's preparations and transit with the same patient, unhurried attention as the march itself transforms what could've been advocacy into something more durable—a film that trusts the viewer to understand that getting there *is* the point.