No(2012)
dir. Pablo Larraín
Defeating a dictator with a jingle.
Where to watch: Free with ads on Tubi; rent Apple TV, AmazonLetterboxd ↗
Chile, 1988: under international pressure, the Pinochet regime agrees to a yes-or-no plebiscite on its own rule. An ad executive, played by Gael García Bernal, is hired to run the opposition's fifteen-minute daily TV slot, and he argues the campaign shouldn't be about the regime's crimes but about joy. It was nominated for the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film.
Why it’s here
The film puts a hard question on the table: do you defeat a dictator with truth, or with a jingle? What's punk is that it takes the ad campaign seriously as political work, and shows what it costs people who lived through the dictatorship to watch their grief become a pitch. What's pedagogical is the media-literacy lesson built into the plot. It pairs with The Shock Doctrine and This Is Not Propaganda, and it stands as a counterpoint to the many films about the regime's brutality.
Where This Film Lives
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