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115 MINUTES | SPANISH | KENDALL SQUARE

In the run-up to the 1973 Chilean coup d’état, 11-year-old Gonzalo (Matias Quer), a quiet, chubby-faced, red-haired rich kid, befriends Pedro Machuca (Ariel Mateluna), a dark-eyed, streetwise ragamuffin who lives in an impoverished Santiago shantytown. Director Andrés Wood, who was eight years old in Santiago when the socialist Allende was overthrown, harvests his memories in a textured and affecting pre-adolescent look at social, political, and personal disorder. Wood nails the cusp-of-awareness perspective as class difference, Gonzalo’s mother’s affair with an older man, and his own sexual awakening at the hands of the fierce Silvana (a show-stealing Manuela Martelli) begin to penetrate his consciousness. If the ending is too drawn out, Wood justifies it with moments — like one with Gonzalo, Pedro, Silvana, and a can of condensed milk on a rocky riverbed — that capture the innocence and impotence of youth.