Sebastián Lelio Watt died on Friday at 52, and was found dead at midday in his home in Las Condes. His family said the death was due to health reasons, but did not specify a medical cause.
Amalia Kassai shared the family statement, which said his memory will remain forever among them. For many readers, his name is tied first to Una mujer fantástica, the film that won the Oscar for best foreign-language film in 2018 and became the first Chilean production to receive that recognition.
That was the point at which Lelio’s career moved from national respect to global visibility. Born on 8 March 1974 in Mendoza, Argentina, he came to Chile when he was two years old, studied at the School of Journalism and then at the School of Film at the Universidad de Chile, and moved through a body of work that included La sagrada familia in 2006, Navidad at the Festival de Cannes in 2009, El año del tigre at the Festival de Locarno in 2011, Gloria in 2013, Disobedience in 2017, Gloria Bell in 2018, El prodigio in 2022 and La Ola at Cannes Premiere in the Festival de Cannes.
His death leaves one gap that the family statement does not fill: what health problem ended his life so suddenly. The public record now marks the end of a filmmaker described as one of Chile’s most internationally visible, a director whose work kept returning to identity, freedom and the frictions of human relationships. Even in mourning, the family’s words point to the scale of the loss: a creative life that, in their telling, helped shape Chilean culture at important moments in its history.
