Veteran documentarist Patricio Guzmán completes his trilogy about Chile’s troubled past, meditating on how the Andes shaped its sense of identity.

After focusing on the north in Nostalgia For The Light and the south in The Pearl Button, Patricio Guzmán turns to the majestic Cordillera of the Andes that runs the length of Chile's eastern border.

Exiled since the 1973 coup, he returns to Santiago, city of his childhood, to ponder – with help from others – what the timeless wall of the Andes Cordillera means to Chilean culture. As ever, his methodology is measured, lyrical (Samuel Laho’s crystalline landscape images are stunning), philosophically allusive and politically pertinent: the film’s second half includes a tribute to cameraman Pablo Salas, who remained in Pinochet’s Chile to film protest and oppression. Salas’ archive represents the need for documentation and remembrance, watchwords for Guzmán since he made The Battle of Chile four decades ago.

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