
Birthday:
01-01-1975
(50 years)
Birthplace:
Chile
Biography
José Luis Torres Leiva (born 1975, Chile) is a film director, editor, and screenwriter.
He has made a considerable number of short films and independent videos. The Sky, the Earth and the Rain (2008) was his first feature film. Supported by the Hubert Bals Fund (HBF), it was nominated for a Tiger Award and won the FIPRESCI Award at IFFR in 2008. Summertime has also been supported by the HBF and had its premiere at the Venice film festival in 2011.
He has made a considerable number of short films and independent videos. The Sky, the Earth and the Rain (2008) was his first feature film. Supported by the Hubert Bals Fund (HBF), it was nominated for a Tiger Award and won the FIPRESCI Award at IFFR in 2008. Summertime has also been supported by the HBF and had its premiere at the Venice film festival in 2011.
Read morearrow_drop_down
Their works
- Release swap_vert
- Title swap_vert
- Ratings swap_vert
close
Como me da la gana II
Act like Self
event2016 star_border 7.8
top_panel_open
Just like in 1985, today Ignacio Agüero is back interrupting filmmakers during shooting, but not to ask what he did thirty years ago, but to find out what is purely cinematographic in what they film. These conversations are related to images in the director's personal archive, as if what is truly cinematographic was found among bits that were never made for the screen.
Tea Time
Thanks
event2014 star_border 7
top_panel_open
More than sixty years after leaving high school, former classmates Alicia, Gema, Angelica, Ximena and Maria Teresa are still devoted to their regular catch-ups in which they exchange gossip and reminiscences over elaborately presented afternoon teas. Impeccably turned out, the ladies’ free-wheeling tea-time chats run the gamut from mortality and marital infidelity to soccer and twerking.
The Guru
Editorial Consultant
event2019
top_panel_open
In the south of Chile on the Chiloé Island, Carlos Ruiz works as an operator in an industrial cannery. He is one of the cogs that makes the machine turn, except when he is a machine himself, like when he delivers blows on the punching-ball. A machine that dreams of glory. Because in his other life, Carlos is little-by-little becoming “the Guru”, who ceaselessly trains in what little leisure time he has so that he can win his match.
Nocturnal. Leo Quinteros
Director
top_panel_open
3 new songs by the Chilean musician Leo Quinteros.
The Little White Doves
Director
event2011
top_panel_open
A small tribute in memory of the filmmaker Raúl Ruiz.
Intermediate
Director
top_panel_open
Experimental film about form and sound, with music by Steven R. Smith.
The Arm of Sandow
Director
top_panel_open
Marcelo Muñoz Salcedo, a 40-year-old man from Santiago, reveals the physical and nutritional routine to which he submits in order to stand out in bodybuilding. Behind prejudices and methodical training, his story entails a humble and courageous openness.
Confesiones de un caballo suicida
Director
event2002
top_panel_open
Collage based on the texts and lives of Diane Arbus, Jean Eustache, Robert Walser, Alejandra Pizarnik, Franz Kafka and Carmen Jung.
El mal
Director
event2004
top_panel_open
The clouds over a couple give rise to a story about the small everyday gestures of a world that stops around the disturbing spaces of everyday life.
No tengo nada que decir
Director
event2003
top_panel_open
Formal exercise on the use of the foreground and the configuration of the world through detail.
The Sky, the Earth and the Rain
Director
event2008 star_border 5.2
top_panel_open
Ana, Verónica, Marta, and Toro are four lonely people who live an unadventurous and quiet existence in southern Chile. They are with each other without the need of using words, trying to save themselves in a stealthy and extreme way. In order not only of getting away of the loneliness that constitutes their innermost core, but also of finding themselves, they reach for each other to get brotherly and sexual love, affection, and a space and time of their own.
Verano
Director
event2011 star_border 4.2
top_panel_open
During one hot summer day, little things happen to the visitors and workers of an old thermal resort in southern Chile. Julieta, Francisco, Isa, Rodrigo, Ignacio, Mariana, Muriel, Gabriela, Eliseo, Norma, Alejandra and Claudio experience the long vacation hours in nature, sleeping in the sun, learning how to drive, cleaning the house, kissing for the first time, swimming at night or just walking and talking, while the day slowly unravels into small fragments of happiness and discovery.
By the Fire
Other
event2012 star_border 7
top_panel_open
Daniel and Alejandra, a working class couple in their late 30s, move to the countryside near the Andes Mountains to begin the next chapter of their life together. Alejandra is ill, and Daniel looks after her, his soul mate. He scratches out a living doing farm work, while dreaming of buying his own plot of land. Over the course of a year, director Alejandro Fernández Almendras captures a life of love and frustration as Alejandra’s condition worsens, and Daniel can do nothing but keep on struggling.
Ocaso
Thanks
event2010 star_border 6
top_panel_open
Rafael, an old butler of a decadent farmhouse, lives with his landlord in that space. He develops a series of actions and daily routines that resume a life and a glorious family past. These actions and gestures will become the only way of sustaining that home and those lives humbled in memory. With the decline of that environment, Rafael will be underdog of his place and his own story, and will be forced to leave in an uncertain trip, towards the last of his possessions.
A Dark Light
Editor
event2024
top_panel_open
Jorge becomes obsessed when he discovers that he has the same name as a young man who died. Upon investigating, he discovers that they also share an obvious physical resemblance. To Josefina, the young man's mother, the encounter with this man awakens a ghost she thought was asleep.
No Place in Anywhere
Producer
event2003 star_border 10
top_panel_open
No Place in Anywhere can deal with many issues. It is a personal journey through image and time. It is the portrait of the "La Matriz" neighborhood in Valparaíso. It is the encounter between reality and fiction. It is the constant search to find a truth within the documentary. It is a musical rehearsal. It is the constant preparation of a documentary. It is a documentary of questions more than answers. A silent face, an empty road, a winter landscape, the wind moving the leaves of a tree, a wall, the sea, the street of a neighborhood, all of them intend to "create through the record" a unique truth for each viewer.
Alicia Dreams of a Lighthouse
Director
event2021
top_panel_open
Part of the project for the new feature film that José Luis Torres Leiva is currently preparing. The short film describes the creative process and the images that come to a writer as she reflects on the figure of lighthouses as insular guides and as a source of existential support and anchorage.
Under the Sky Shelter
Script Supervisor
event2022 star_border 2
top_panel_open
Is set in the figure of a transhumant muleteer who once a year takes more than a thousand sheep up into the heart of the Andes Mountains. Accompanied by six men and ten dogs, he crosses forests, cliffs and rivers in search of food for his livestock, regardless of the risk to his life that this effort entails.
The Winds Know That I'm Coming Back Home
Director
event2016 star_border 6.6
top_panel_open
Looking for extras and locations, a filmmaker settles on Chiloé, the second largest island off the coast of Chile. He does auditions, but mainly listens patiently to the stories of young and old people. As an outsider, he cautiously searches for the soul of the community and its underlying tensions.
Women Workers Leaving the Factory
Director
event2005 star_border 6
top_panel_open
An atmospheric portrait of four women who leave the factory where they work to go to the beach.
Aurora
Editor
event2014 star_border 4.3
top_panel_open
After reading in the newspaper that a newborn baby was found in a dumpster, a teacher becomes obsessed with giving it a proper burial.
The Time that Rests
Director
event2007
top_panel_open
The time that Rests is a contemplative look at the daily life of the José Horwitz Barak Hospital, one of the oldest psychiatric facilities in Chile, located in the north of Santiago. It is not a film about madness, but about the passing of time in a certain place, which is reflected in simple things, in faces, in objects, nature, places, details, the humanity of the people portrayed. It is a film where every subtle visual and sound element becomes relevant.
Trance
Director
event2008
top_panel_open
Ten segments linked to a primary idea: an evocation of the early cinema images.
See and Listen
Director
event2014 star_border 10
top_panel_open
Blind and deaf people converse, question, surprise and educate each others. Fingers move about quickly, translation follows promptly, both visible and audible, hands get touched and squeezed, and out of their tactfulness, sentences, stories, reserve and emotions arise
Winter: Images of Contemporary Chilean Architecture
Director
event2020
top_panel_open
This exhibition presents projects of relevance to contemporary Chilean architecture such as the reconstruction of the Pereira Palace in the center of Santiago and buildings that inhabit nature, located in the Atacama Desert and Torres del Paine, through the lens of 15 photographers Chileans and foreigners. The photographs in Winter: Images of Contemporary Chilean Architecture portray the construction and restoration processes of the architectural works presented. In parallel, these photographic images are accompanied by small screens whose content is audiovisual fragments, with records of the architectural processes. These films seek to contribute to understanding each of the architectural works even more.
Los soñadores
Director
event2016
top_panel_open
A film of people who daydream. A special dream that marked something in their lives, either because it was premonitory or prophetic, because it took them to a lost or forgotten place of their childhood or because he faced them with a fear that they believed to be insurmountable.
When Clouds Hide the Shadow
Director
event2024 star_border 8
top_panel_open
Maria travels to Puerto Williams to star in a movie. But the film crew won't be able to arrive due to a strong storm. Alone, she'll seek help for severe back pain, which will lead her to discover life in the southernmost city in the world and a pending story in her life.
Adios amigo mío, sin gestos, sin palabras
Editor
event2015
top_panel_open
The title comes from Sergei Yesenin's last poem before comiting suicide. Using Virginia Woolf's last letters as a base, this film is meditation on the power of the word and its undertsanding and the the last moments before saying "goodbye".
11 Habitaciones en Antártica
Director
event2013
top_panel_open
Leo Quinteros music is the base to this film in which filmmakers, actors and actresses and other creators reunite in different hotel rooms.
Ana's Dream
Writer
event2017
top_panel_open
Stark formal choices counterbalance profound emotions and vulnerability in this poignant lover’s goodbye.
What Is This Story and How Does It End?
Director
event2013
top_panel_open
A prominent Chilean documentary director shares his family album with the film editor of his late works. A review of one hundred photographs and a quiet conversation will rise to memories of the films of one of the most personal filmmakers.
Absence
Editor
event2017 star_border 5.2
top_panel_open
A love triangle between a pioneer female writer; her husband -a retired military official-and the love of her life, the painter Moritz Rugendas, with whom she maintains an epistolary relationship for 10 years, with few personal encounters.
Copia imperfecta: para Raúl Ruiz
Director
event2012
top_panel_open
A beautiful homage to Raúl Ruiz, the great Chilean filmmaker who died last summer.
Nada pertenece a la memoria
Editor
event2017
top_panel_open
Pedro Chaskel, director, editor and post-producer. Based on domestic memories, and accompanied by representative fragments,tries to reconstruct the most important works of his career and motivations.
About Things That Happened to Me
Writer
event2018
top_panel_open
Based on the book by author Marcelo Matthey, this short film narrates his own life in a style reminiscent of school compositions. His constant strolls through streets, houses and beaches are recorded in notes of what he saw, felt or thought during these wanderings or moments, but almost only recalling the processes, the timeline in which things occur and come to mind, the trail of associations coming one after the other, like the steps of a person walking along a street. Immediate impressions, fleeting moments normally lost in time and which are captured in the images and sounds of this film.
All the Letters that I Never Sent
Director
event2017
top_panel_open
A film about the ghosts of those letters that never reached their destination.A neighborhood detained in time that nevertheless will change irremediably and that keeps the memory of thousands of secret stories, hidden in its streets, houses and corners. Mothers who seek reconciliation with their daughters, confessions of unrequited love, loneliness and many searches for an answer that will never come.
Death Will Come and Shall Have Your Eyes
Director
event2019 star_border 6.2
top_panel_open
Two women who have spent their whole lives together must deal with the illness affecting one of them. The sick woman decides not to have treatment and they move into a cabin in the woods to wait for the day that death will come into their lives. The situation sees the resurfacing of the love that time had buried under the routine. Gradually their relationship will strengthen as death bides its time outside the cabin.
Perros sin cola
Editor
event2019 star_border 10
top_panel_open
Rosario is a wandering teenager who believes that her mother, does not really love her and she's apparently right. The young woman has found refuge in the dance and in her friend Jonathan, a young street vendor who helps raise money for the wedding of his sister Jenny: Rosario's silent and platonic love. On the day of the party the revelry and excesses revealing Rosario can't leaver her family's fate behind.
Lucia
Assistant Director
event2011 star_border 6.2
top_panel_open
Lucía is a young woman who works as a seamstress in a factory and lives with her father in an old house in Santiago, Chile. The film occurs in December 2006 during the weeks that take place from the ex-dictator Pinochet’s funeral to Christmas Eve. Through the simple observation of Lucía’s daily life, the spectator is allowed access into a hidden and neglected world of a generation of Chileans striving to recover from the military dictatorship.
Against all the evils of the world
Director
event2021
top_panel_open
Everything resides in the mind of Lois, schizophrenic artist and a strong follower of Virginia Woolf, who says, "There is no gate, no lock, no bolt that you can impose on the freedom of my mind." The protagonist gives life to the story, confronting his lucidity to the difficulties that torment him: contradictions, achievements, joys and pains, which build a reflective and emotional language that accounts for the mysterious mechanism of the human mind.
Enigma
Script Consultant
event2018 star_border 5.4
top_panel_open
Ten years after her daughter was the victim of a hate crime, brutally beaten in the streets of Santiago for being a lesbian, Nancy is asked to participate in an unsolved mysteries TV show that will recreate the incident. Nancy, a hairdresser who has worked very hard to move on with her life, will have to decide if finding justice for her deceased daughter is worth exposing herself and her family on television.
Ni juntos, ni solos
Script Consultant
event2020 star_border 9
top_panel_open
Amparo is 18 years old and lives in the city of Iquique, in northern Chile. Among confusion, she must deal with the discovery of her father's secret life, feel love for the first time, decide whether to leave her hometown to study, and even realize that perhaps friendship is not meant to be forever.
The Future
Thanks
event2013 star_border 5.3
top_panel_open
When their parents die, Bianca starts to smoke and Tomas is still a virgin. The orphans explore the dangerous streets of adulthood until Bianca finds Maciste, a retired Mr. Universe, and enters his dark mansion in search of a future.
Rey
Development Producer
event2017 star_border 4.3
top_panel_open
In the nineteenth century, a French adventurer sets off to establish a kingdom in the inhospitable South of Chile, uniting the feared Mapuche under him. The response of the Chilean army is devastating.
Thursday Till Sunday
Other
event2012 star_border 6.5
top_panel_open
As she and her family embark on a short vacation, a young Chilean girl slowly comes to the realization that her parents might be splitting up.
Land and Shade
Script Consultant
event2015 star_border 7
top_panel_open
Alfonso is an old farmer who has returned home to tend to his son, who is gravely ill. He rediscovers his old house, where the woman who was once his wife still lives, with his daughter-in-law and grandson. The landscape that awaits him resembles a wasteland. Vast sugar cane plantations surround the house, producing perpetual clouds of ash. 17 years after abandoning them, Alfonso tries to fit back in and save his family.
Candelaria
Director of Photography
event2013
top_panel_open
A stately home, built in 1922, is now a dilapidated stage where memories and history are present in the old home movies starring those that once inhabited it.
Show more expand_more
keyboard_double_arrow_down