Sebastián Lelio, the director whose A Fantastic Woman gave Chile its first Academy Award for best international feature, has died at 52, his partner, Amalia Kassai, announced on Instagram.
Kassai said he died after health complications but did not say what they were. He was found dead Friday at his home in Las Condes, a district of Santiago, and the family asked for privacy.
Writing in Spanish, Kassai described a period of deep mourning and said Lelio's memory would stay with the family. She praised him as a remarkable man whose work enriched his country's culture during key chapters of its history.
A Fantastic Woman, which follows a transgender woman, premiered at the Berlin Film Festival and went on to collect honors there and at the Spirit Awards in addition to its Oscar.
Lelio said in 2018 that the film arrived while a gender identity bill had sat idle in Chile's congress for seven years, and that its global success helped restart the national debate.
His international breakthrough had come earlier with Gloria in 2013, a portrait of a woman in her late 50s returning to dating. It premiered in Berlin, where its star, Paulina García, won an acting prize.
Lelio then turned to English-language work. Disobedience, a London love story between characters played by Rachel Weisz and Rachel McAdams, earned five British independent film award nominations. He remade Gloria as Gloria Bell with Julianne Moore and adapted Emma Donoghue's novel The Wonder with Florence Pugh.
His last completed film, The Wave, a musical protest drama, premiered at Cannes in 2025. He had been developing an adaptation of Alejandro Zambra's novel The Chilean Poet and was attached to Voyagers, which casts Andrew Garfield as Carl Sagan and Daisy Edgar-Jones as Ann Druyan.
Making a film is like a gift you leave somewhere – you then hide and see what happens
Sebastián Lelio, filmmaker
Born in Argentina on March 8, 1974, Lelio moved to Chile with his mother at age two. After a year studying journalism, he graduated from film school and released Cero, a documentary about 9/11, in 2003.
His first narrative feature, The Sacred Family, premiered at the San Sebastián festival in 2005. Christmas followed in 2009 with a Cannes debut, and he also made The Year of the Tiger before Gloria.
