Chilean filmmaker Sebastián Lelio has died at the age of 52.
He was best known for the Oscar-winning trans drama A Fantastic Woman and his English-language films included Gloria Bell and The Wonder.
His partner Amalia Kassai announced his death on Instagram without specifying the cause of death but telling her subscribers, in Spanish, that it was a painful moment for his family. Chilean media reports that he died at his home in Las Condes, Santiago.
Lelio was born in Argentina but moved to Chile when he was two years old. He studied journalism for a year before graduating from film school, then released the 9/11 documentary Cero in 2003. His first narrative film, La Famille Sacrée, premiered at the San Sebastian Film Festival in 2005.
Its sequel, 2009’s Christmas, premiered at Cannes, but it was 2013’s Gloria that gave it a major international breakthrough. The drama, about a woman in her 50s who starts dating again, premiered in Berlin and won its star Paulina García an acting award at the festival.
Lelio followed up with A Fantastic Woman, a drama about the life of a trans woman, another revelation that became the first Chilean film to win the Oscar for best international feature film. In a five-star review, the Guardian’s Peter Bradshaw called it “a sublime study of the exalted ordeal of grief.”
“When we released it in 2017, a gender identity bill had been pending in Congress for seven years,” he said in an interview with the Guardian in 2018. “In one way or another, the release of the film and the year in which it became world famous helped to reactivate the debate in Chile. »
He made his English-language debut with the London drama Disobedience which told a queer love story between women played by Rachel Weisz and Rachel McAdams. It has been nominated for five British Independent Film Awards.
Lelio then remade Gloria as Gloria Bell, then set in America and starring Julianne Moore in the lead role. He followed it with a critically acclaimed adaptation of Emma Donoghue’s novel The Wonder, starring Florence Pugh.
“I love working with actors and I need to know that they trust me and that they can explore, get lost, be stupid or brave, and I will take care of them,” he told the Guardian. “I love working on set – that’s where the brilliance is.”
His last film was 2025’s The Wave, a musical protest drama that premiered at Cannes.
“Making a film is like a gift that you leave somewhere: you then hide and see what happens,” he said.
Gn entert
