14/02/2026 - BERLINALE 2026: Juan Pablo Sallato’s true-life political thriller follows a Chilean air force captain’s ethical calculations amidst the coup d’état by Pinochet

For a film captured in luscious monochrome, its title, The Red Hangar [+see also:
trailer
film profile], has an unusual portent. Is it a literal space or a metaphorical description? And surely the “red” is an omen of violence, in addition to the colour’s political resonance? Either way, it hovers menacingly in our minds as viewers, similar to how it does for its lead character, Captain Jorge Silva (Nicolás Zárate) – often captured in tight close-ups in an already claustrophobic aspect ratio frame of 1.66:1 – lurking in the visual blindspot he can’t see. The lead trainer for Chile’s Air Force Academy in the twilight of the Allende era, he responds with an implacable blankness once the US-backed military coup to install Augusto Pinochet ramps up – chilling for the moral individual he seems to be, but mandatory for a professional role requiring loyalty to his superiors, and his subordinates providing the same. So, instructed by his higher officer Colonel Jahn (Marcial Tagle), he must administer this “red hangar” – which turns out to be an ad-hoc prison for dissidents – on his premises, lest he end up in it instead.

Premiering in the Berlinale’s Perspectives strand, The Red Hangar sees Chilean documentary and TV regular Juan Pablo Sallato making his fiction feature debut, with screenplay duties entirely handled by Luis Emilio Guzmán. Whilst highly watchable, and allowing Silva (in a role adapted from his actual experience at the time) to be shrouded in ambiguity until the end, it still has a certain televisual efficiency and feels like a suspense “finger exercise” for the creatives behind it, at its slender running time of 80 minutes, as opposed to a truly discursive and realised achievement. It diverges from Pablo Larraín’s fine early film Post Mortem [+see also:
trailer
film profile] with its welcome focus on the coup’s internal military machinations, but lacks that work’s more provocative and impish irony.

With the movie set across 24 hours, as 10 September 1973 melts into the following, fateful day, which left the country stunted in totalitarianism for a generation, Silva is first introduced with an offbeat, yet vital, character detail: that he was a legendary parachutist in his early air-force days, with one manoeuvre involving an intricate descent into a football stadium as a match was ongoing. This exposition arises during a truck patrol with his new rookie sergeant Hernández (Aron Hernández), who idolised Silva upon learning of this feat amidst the former’s rural upbringing outside of Santiago, where his own father was a strict military officer. The captain’s wife, Rosa (Catalina Stuardo) – a history teacher at a nearby technical university – also appears to live with him on the base, and his tender embrace with her, at the end of a long day, reveals that he’s not solely living for himself as political danger looms.

The suppression of protests and rounding-up of MAPU party activists are all glimpsed from Silva’s closed-off perspective, and as he’s a member of the military’s pro-Allende faction, The Red Hangar’s narrative becomes a test case for his integrity and, worse, his potential for appeasement. But rather than sanctifying him as a martyr, the film’s final act opts for a grittier and more disturbing tone, showing the behavioural chains of obedience that perennially allow fascist systems to thrive, and Silva’s uneasy proximity to them. Although Chile did emerge from its brutal Pinochet era, the film looks ahead to our present, warning that such threats are far from over elsewhere in the world.  

The Red Hangar is a co-production by Chile, Italy and Argentina, staged by Villano, Brava Cine, Rain Dogs, Caravan, Berta Film and TVN. Its international sales are handled by MPM Premium.