Sebastián Lelio Dies: Oscar-Winning ‘A Fantastic Woman’ Filmmaker Who Also Made ‘The Wonder’ & ‘The Wave’ Was 52 — SkimNews
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- Sebastián Lelio died Friday in Santiago at 52; partner Amalia Kassai announced that he died following health complications, local media reported he was found at home, and no exact cause was provided.
- A Fantastic Woman, Lelio’s 2017 film, won the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film—Chile’s only win in the category now called Best International Feature Film—and took three Berlin awards including Best Feature Film and Screenplay.
- The Wonder earned a BAFTA nomination for Outstanding British Film of the Year; Lelio co-wrote the screenplay for the 1862-set story starring Florence Pugh as nurse Lib Wright and Kíla Lord Cassidy as Anna, a girl claiming she has not eaten for four months.
- The Wave bowed at Cannes and reached theaters through Wolfe Video as a musical about Chile’s 2018 feminist protests against harassment and abuse; Lelio argued that genre filmmaking should push boundaries rather than become an exercise in nostalgia.
- Sebastián Lelio said in 2025 that his recurring focus on women began with a film-school tape made around age 20 about four women; he called it a genuine interest, never programmatic, that became more prominent as the world changed.
- Chilean Poet was the Alejandro Zambra novel adaptation Lelio had been filming, while Voyagers remained in the works with Andrew Garfield as astronomer Carl Sagan and Daisy Edgar-Jones as Cosmos filmmaker Ann Druyan.
Why it matters: Chile’s only Oscar win in the category now called Best International Feature Film came from the work of a director who died at 52. Two projects described as active—Chilean Poet, based on Alejandro Zambra’s novel, and Voyagers with Andrew Garfield and Daisy Edgar-Jones—also remain without the filmmaker who was making or developing them.
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