Movie · 2012 · Drama, History · 1h 58m · R · Spanish
Curator score: 7.7/10 (66K ratings)
CHILE, HAPPINESS IS COMING!
Overview
In 1988, Chilean military dictator Augusto Pinochet, due to international pressure, is forced to call a plebiscite on his presidency. The country will vote ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ to Pinochet extending his rule for another eight years. Opposition leaders for the ‘No’ vote persuade a brash young advertising executive, René Saavedra, to spearhead their campaign. Against all odds, with scant resources and while under scrutiny by the despot’s minions, Saavedra and his team devise an audacious plan to win the election and set Chile free.
Ratings
Curator score: 7.7/10
IMDb: 7.4/10
Letterboxd: 3.79/5
Rotten Tomatoes: 93%
Metacritic: 81
TMDB: 7.2/10
Director
Pablo Larraín
Production
Participant, Fabula, Funny Balloons
Cast
Gael García Bernal, Alfredo Castro, Néstor Cantillana, Luis Gnecco, Antonia Zegers, Jaime Vadell, Diego Muñoz, Alejandro Goic, Marcial Tagle, Manuela Oyarzún, Elsa Poblete, Roberto Farías, Sergio Hernández, Paloma Moreno, César Caillet, Pablo Krögh, Amparo Noguera, Claudia Cabezas, Paulo Brunetti, Iñigo Urrutia
Curator Review
Verdict
A smart, unusually textured political drama that turns a referendum campaign into a study of image-making, persuasion, and democratic pressure. Its analog-video look gives the period a lived-in immediacy, and the film stays sharp by treating advertising as both a weapon and a moral compromise.
Best for
Viewers interested in political history and anti-dictatorship stories
Fans of formally inventive historical dramas
People who like campaigns, media strategy, and behind-the-scenes power plays
Audiences who prefer restrained, observational storytelling over melodrama
Skip if
You want a sweeping, emotionally cathartic revolution movie
You dislike period films shot with intentionally rough video aesthetics
You prefer fast-paced thrillers with constant plot twists
You want a story that stays purely on the side of idealism rather than compromise
Overview
No is one of those political films that understands how power really moves: through messaging, repetition, and the ability to shape what people feel before they fully know what they think. Rather than dramatizing history as a grand uprising, it focuses on the mechanics of persuasion, which makes the stakes feel both specific and universal.
Worth noting
Pablo Larraín’s use of period video is more than a stylistic flourish. The grainy, boxy image collapses the distance between archive and fiction, making the campaign feel like something captured in real time rather than reconstructed later. That choice also sharpens the film’s central tension: can a democracy be won with the tools of advertising, or does that strategy dilute the very cause it serves?
Bottom line
What keeps the film compelling is its refusal to simplify its protagonist or its politics. It is funny, uneasy, and observant about compromise, and it finds drama in the friction between moral urgency and market-tested optimism. The result is a political story that feels both historically grounded and eerily current.
Top Letterboxd reviews
Lise (4★) · 648 likes
Imagine. Here you are, a Chilean, and for the very first time in decades you are given the opportunity to speak freely about Pinochet's atrocities. Without reprisals. Not just that, but you can do it on television. Not just that, but you can do it every day for 15 minutes for 27 days.
Finally you can let other Chileans know exactly what those atrocities were. You can let the world know. Finally the world will know about the disappeared, the… more
Dom (3★) · 396 likes
I watched this with my girlfriend. At one point she said she wanted to marry Gael Garcia Bernal but also raise him as her child.
Muriel (5★) · 336 likes
completely mesmerized by everything from this, specifically gael garcía bernal mi marxista vende patria. them advertising the "no" with the rainbow and jane fonda was very gay.
Harrison Gale (5★) · 289 likes
graphic design literally saved Chile
Juan Castillo (4.5★) · 231 likes
Admirable trabajo de Pablo Larraín, que puede considerarse un triunfo en todos los aspectos: formales, narrativos, dramáticos, conceptuales...
La filmación en vídeo analógico, el formato 4:3, los hábiles insertos de material de archivo y la solvencia del elenco aportan una altísima verosimilitud a la cinta, mientras que los sutiles acercamientos a los tropos del thriller político o del drama histórico generan implicación en el espectador sin apelar a la sensiblería o a la hipérbole.
Por si esto no fuese suficiente… more Admirable trabajo de Pablo Larraín, que puede considerarse un triunfo en todos los aspectos: formales, narrativos, dramáticos, conceptuales...
La filmación en vídeo analógico, el formato 4:3, los hábiles insertos de material de archivo y la solvencia del elenco aportan una altísima verosimilitud a la cinta, mientras que los sutiles acercamientos a los tropos del thriller político o del drama histórico generan implicación en el espectador sin apelar a la sensiblería o a la hipérbole.
Por si esto no fuese suficiente… more
2008 · Action, Crime, Drama · 2h 29m · R · Curator 6.3/10 (63.6K ratings) · Where to watch: Amazon Prime Video, Amazon Prime Video with Ads
A high-energy political drama about ideology, media, and the public face of radical conflict.
Topics
political drama, historical drama, Latin American cinema, anti-authoritarian, campaign strategy, media satire, 1980s, analog video, democracy, thriller-adjacent