# Valeria Sarmiento

Valeria Sarmiento (born 29 October 1948) is a film editor, director and screenwriter best known for her work in France, Portugal and her native Chile. She has worked both in film and television, directing 20 feature films, documentaries and television series'. She is the widow of Chilean film director Raúl Ruiz (1941-2011) with whom she collaborated for decades as regular editor and co-writer. She has also edited films for Luc Moullet, Robert Kramer and Ventura Pons and is a Guggenheim Fellow (1988).

## Biography

Sarmiento was born in the Chilean municipality of Valparaíso and was first exposed to film at the age of five, becoming familiar with the work of Orson Welles, Alfred Hitchcock and others. She rarely saw French films due to censorship but, thanks to what she refers to as a "moment of magic", was able to watch Jean-Luc Godard's Breathless (1960) at the age of twelve. She went on to study film and philosophy at the University of Valparaíso and married filmmaker Raúl Ruiz in 1969. In 1974, the couple were forced to move to Paris due to the 1973 Chilean coup d'état of Augusto Pinochet.
Sarmiento made her directorial debut with the documentary Un sueño como de colores (1972) about a group of Chilean women dedicated to striptease. Her later work as a director, usually in melodrama, romantic drama and costume drama, has also often featured strong female characters who face machismo and sexism. Her debut feature Notre mariage (1984) was a Grand Prix winner for Best New Director at the San Sebastián International Film Festival, her 1991 film Amelia Lópes O'Neill was entered into the 41st Berlin International Film Festival and her Napoleonic war epic Lines of Wellington competed for the Golden Lion at the 69th Venice International Film Festival.
A symposium on Sarmiento's feminism was held at Stanford University in May 2008 and the Cinémathèque Française ran a Sarmiento retrospective in October 2018.

## Filmography

| Year | Title | Role | Role | Role | Role |
| Year | Title | Director | Screenwriter | Editor | Actor |
| 1972 | Un sueño como de colores | Yes | | | |
| 1972 | Poeísa popular: la teoría y la práctica | Yes | | Yes | |
| 1972 | Los minuteros | Yes | | Yes | |
| 1972 | The Expropriation | | | Yes | |
| 1975 | Dialogues of Exiles | | | Yes | Yes |
| 1977 | Dog's Dialogue | | | Yes | |
| 1978 | Genèse d'un repas | | | Yes | |
| 1978 | The Suspended Vocation | | | Yes | |
| 1979 | Le mal du pays | Yes | | Yes | |
| 1979 | Gens du nulle part, gens de toutes parts | Yes | Yes | Yes | |
| 1980 | La borgne | | | Yes | |
| 1980 | Guns | | | Yes | |
| 1981 | The Territory | | | Yes | |
| 1982 | On Top of the Whale | | | Yes | |
| 1982 | El hombre cuando es hombre | Yes | Yes | | |
| 1983 | Les minutes d'un faiseur de film | | | Yes | |
| 1983 | Three Crowns of the Sailor | | | Yes | |
| 1983 | City of Pirates | | | Yes | |
| 1984 | 7 faux raccords | | | Yes | |
| 1984 | Notre mariage | Yes | Yes | | |
| 1985 | Voyage d'une main | | | Yes | Yes |
| 1985 | Treasure Island | | | Yes | |
| 1987 | Brise-glace | | | Yes | |
| 1990 | The Blind Owl | | | Yes | |
| 1990 | Amelia Lópes O'Neill | Yes | Yes | | |
| 1994 | Viaggio clandestino - Vite di santi e di peccaroti | | | Yes | |
| 1995 | Wind Water | | | Yes | |
| 1995 | Elle | Yes | | | |
| 1997 | Le film à venir | | | Yes | |
| 1997 | Genealogies of a Crime | | | Yes | |
| 1998 | L'inconnu de Strasbourg | Yes | Yes | | |
| 1998 | Carlos Fuentes: Un voyage dans les temps | Yes | | | |
| 2000 | Love Torn in a Dream | | | Yes | |
| 2001 | Savage Souls | | | Yes | |
| 2002 | Rosa la china | Yes | Yes | | |
| 2003 | That Day | | | Yes | |
| 2003 | A Place Among the Living | | | Yes | |
| 2004 | Edipo | | | Yes | |
| 2005 | The Lost Domain | | | Yes | |
| 2006 | Klimt | | | Yes | |
| 2008 | Secrets | Yes | Yes | | |
| 2010 | A Closed Book | | | Yes | |
| 2010 | Mysteries of Lisbon | | | Yes | |
| 2012 | Lines of Wellington (conceived by Ruiz, shot by Sarmiento) | Yes | | | |
| 2013 | Maria Graham: Diary of a Residence in Chile | Yes | | | |
| 2017 | The Wandering Soap Opera (shot by Ruiz in 1990, completed by Sarmiento) | Yes | | | |
| 2018 | The Black Book of Father Dinis | Yes | | | |
| 2020 | The Tango of the Widower (shot by Ruiz in 1967, completed by Sarmiento) | Yes | | | |