Sebastián Lelio, the Chilean Academy Award-winning director and screenwriter, died at the age of 52 on Friday in Santiago. His partner, Amalia Kassai, confirmed the news, along with his family, in post via Instagram, citing that Lelio passed away “following health complications” but did not describe the complications further. In a translated form of the post, Kassai wrote,
With great sadness, we announce the death, following health complications, of Chilean filmmaker Sebastián Lelio. We are going through a time of profound grief, and his memory will remain with us forever. He was a wonderful person who made significant contributions to Chilean culture at important moments in its history. As a family, we ask for privacy and consideration during these difficult times.
Lelio was known for his female-character-driven stories; his 2017 drama A Fantastic Woman depicted a young trans woman (Daniela Vega) living in Santiago with her older boyfriend (Francisco Reyes) when tragedy strikes, and she is forced to grapple with the aftereffects it leaves on her as well as the familial turmoil it brings with it. A Fantastic Woman went on to win an Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, marking it as the first and only time a Chilean entry has won that category, and garnered several more critical accolades. Lelio was also behind the sapphic romance drama Disobedience starring Rachel Weisz and Rachel McAdams, which was released the same year and centers around a woman who returns to the strict Orthodox Jewish community for her father’s funeral after being ostracized by the same community years ago. In 2022, Lelio released The Wonder, starring Florence Pugh and centered around a British nurse sent to a rural Irish village in order to inspect a young fasting girl who has been able to survive without eating. Lelio’s latest film came last year in the musical The Wave, which starred Daniela López and focuses on “the burst of feminist civil disobedience that swept Chile in the spring of 2018, where mass protests and university rallies were sparked by a collective desire to bring attention to widespread harassment and abuse against women in the country.” Lelio told Deadline the reason behind his focus on women-led stories, saying,
I found the first exercise I did in film school on a tape a while back. I was around 20, and it’s about four women. I understood it has always been there as a genuine interest. It was never programmatic. And then, the world changed, and this dimension became more prominent.
Lelio is survived by his immediate family.
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