| Sumario: | This article argues that despite the blossoming post-dictatorship Chilean documentary production and the growing scholarly interest that these works have aroused, little has been done to see these recent documentaries in relation to the prolific production of the so-called ‘Chilean cinema in exile’, which remains, for the most part, in ‘exile’. This article draws on the notion of desexilio developed by Uruguayan writer Mario Benedetti to revisit homecoming documentaries of the 1980s. It focuses on the seminal Fragments from an Unfinished Diary (Angelina Vázquez, 1983) to argue that although this and other early cinematic returns have been deeply overlooked, they stand as clear antecedents to the so-called ‘performative’ or ‘autobiographical’ shift in current Chilean documentary. The directors' memories of exile and return shed light to the multiple ways in which the Chilean nation has been visualised and reshaped after the cataclysmic event of the 1973 military coup d'état.
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