Set against the fall of the socialist Salvador Allende government and the installation of Pinochet’s CIA-backed military junta in 1973 Chile, director Andres Wood’s Machuca combines a coming-of-age story with a country’s burgeoning social and political upheavals. Two very different boys—one from the privileged Santiago suburbs, the other a slum-dweller from a shantytown—become classmates and grow closer until their friendship is threatened by the intractable forces of revolution—and the rather more complex allure of their classmate Silvana. Wood’s wonderful film succeeds on both a human and a political level, the different elements coming together in a final conflagration of considerable power.