Patricio Guzmán was born in 1941 in Santiago de Chile. He studied at the «Official School of Cinematographic Art» in Madrid. He has dedicated his career to documentary cinema. His films have screened in many festivals and received international recognition. Between 1972 and 1979, he directed The Battle of Chile, a five-hour trilogy about Salvador Allende's period of government and its fall. This film is the foundation of his cinema. The North American magazine CINEASTE named it "one of the 10 best political films in the world." After Pinochet’s “coup d'état”, Patricio Guzmán was arrested and imprisoned for two weeks in the National Stadium, where he was repeatedly threatened by simulated executions. In 1973, he left Chile and moved to Cuba, then to Spain and France, but remained very attached to his country and its history. He presides over the International Documentary Festival in Santiago de Chile (FIDOCS), which he created in 1997.

The Cordillera of dreams, presented in the official selection at the 2019 Cannes Film Festival, closes a trilogy which begun with Nostalgia for the lights (Cannes 2010) and The pearl button (Berlin 2015). His new film, My imaginary country, is selected at the 2022 Cannes Film Festival.