Alsino and the Condor

Miguel Ernesto Littín Cucumides (9 August 1942 in Palmilla) is a Chilean film director, screenwriter, film producer and novelist. He was born to a Palestinian father, Hernán Littin and a Greek mother, Cristina Cucumides.

Miguel Littín directed the most popular Chilean film of all times, El Chacal de Nahueltoro (1969) becoming a figure of the New Latin American Cinema.

Littín was exiled in México shortly after Augusto Pinochet came to power in a violent military coup, which ousted the democratically elected socialist president Salvador Allende, on September 11, 1973.

In México he did several films. Letters from Marusia, based on a miners strike in Chile. El Recurso del Método (Long Live the President) based on the Alejo Carpentier’s book El Recurso del método (Reasons of State) a co-production with France and Cuba. The Widow of Montiel with Geraldine Chaplin based on a Gabriel García Márquez short story. Then he went to Nicaragua to do Alsino and the Condor, based the novel Alsino by Pedro Prado.

He moved to Spain in 1984, Littín decided to enter Chile clandestine to do a documentary that showed the condition of the country under the Pinochet’s regime and also show the country that he loved.It was made the subject of Nobel Laureate Gabriel Garcia Marquez ’s book Clandestine in Chile: The Adventures of Miguel Littin.

He eventually returned to Chile where he continued to make films among them Tierra del Fuego based on the adventures of Julius Popper an explorer and Dawson, Isla 10 about a group of political prisoners sent to Dawson’s island during Pinochet’s regime. Littín was mayor of his home town in the center valley, Palmilla in 1992-94 and re-elected for the period 1996-2000.

His films Actas de Marusia and Alsino and the Condor were nominated by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for Best Film in a Foreign Language. Alsino and the Condor won the Golden Medal at the Moscow International Film Festival. —Wikipedia