When, in the first few weeks of this year, two Chilean feature films won prestigious international awards, cinema critics in Santiago reacted with patriotic pride, but also a degree of surprise.
No-one had expected La Nana (The Maid), directed by young filmmaker Sebastián Silva, to win a World Cinema prize at the Sundance Festival in Utah. And despite his previous success with the 2004 film Machuca, few had predicted that Andrés Wood would win a Goya - regarded as the Spanish equivalent of an Oscar - for La Buena Vida (The Good Life).