One of the most respected and admired documentary filmmakers in the world, Patricio Guzmán explores the Patagonian Archipelago and its meaning in Chilean history—from its use by Chile’s Indigenous peoples to its function as a grave site for Pinochet’s desaparecidos—in this visually stunning follow-up to 2010’s masterly Nostalgia for the Light.

Rightfully earning the film “Best Script” at the Berlinale (the rarest of awards for a documentary), Guzmán’s eloquent, entrancing narration familiarizes us with the film’s remarkable setting while drawing connections and dispensing heady concepts. With its mountains, glaciers and volcanoes, the world’s largest archipelago is practically supernatural in appearance. And bordering it is the water which contains vast reserves of memories and can give voice to the past with just the slightest coercion. Consequently, while immaculate images of ice floes and waterfalls, nebulae and quartz captivate us, it’s Guzmán’s accounts of this region’s chequered history, of native tribes tragically decimated by colonists, of political prisoners disposed of in the sea, that are the most arresting.