Sebastián Lelio, the Oscar-winning Chilean writer-director behind pictures such as A Fantastic woman, The Wonder, And The wavedied Friday in Santiago. He was 52 years old.
His family confirmed the news in a social media post from Lelio’s partner, Amalia Kassai, and local Chilean media reported that he was found dead at his home. Kassai’s post said he died “due to health complications” but did not provide the exact cause.
“It is with great sadness that we announce the death, following health complications, of Chilean filmmaker Sebastián Lelio,” she wrote in a translation. “We are going through a time of deep grief and his memory will stay with us forever. He was a wonderful person who made significant contributions to Chilean culture at important times in its history. As a family, we ask for privacy and consideration during these difficult times.”
Lelio was filming Chilean poet, an adaptation of the novel by Alejandro Zambra. He had another project, Travelers starring Andrew Garfield as astronomer Carl Sagan alongside Daisy Edgar-Jones as Cosmos filmmaker Ann Druyan, in preparation.
Several of Lelio’s films tell female-centered stories. His photo from 2017 A fantastic woman won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, the only time Chile has won the category now called Best International Feature Film. It premiered at the Berlin Film Festival that year, winning three awards, including Best Feature Film and Best Screenplay, and then a Spirit Award and numerous other honors.
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The Spanish-language pic follows a waitress and singer (Daniela Vega) and an older man (Francisco Reyes) who are in love and planning for the future. After he suddenly falls ill and dies, she is forced to face her family and society and fight again to show them that she is strong, outspoken and fantastic.
Florence Pugh and Sebastián Lelio at Deadline’s Contenders: Los Angeles in 2022
Alberto Rodriguez/Deadline via Getty Images
His 2022 psychological thriller The wonder earned a BAFTA nomination for Outstanding British Film of the Year. Set in 1862, it stars Florence Pugh as Lib Wright, an English nightingale nurse, called to a pious community in the Irish Midlands to examine 11-year-old Anna (Kíla Lord Cassidy), who claims to have not eaten in four months, surviving on “manna from heaven.” Lib is determined to find out what’s really going on as Anna’s health deteriorates. Lelio also co-wrote the screenplay for the pic, which debuted at the Telluride Film Festival.
RELATED: Telluride ‘The Wonder’ Review: Florence Pugh in Sebastian Lelio’s Netflix Gothic Drama
Watch Lelio and Pugh talk about The wonder at Deadline’s The Contenders 2022 event in Los Angeles below.
Lelio’s most recent film is last year’s The Wave, which bowed at the Cannes Film Festival and was released theatrically this summer via Wolfe Video. The musical pic featuring Daniela López follows the wave of feminist civil disobedience that swept Chile in the spring of 2018, where mass protests and university rallies were sparked by a collective desire to call attention to widespread harassment and abuse against women in the country. Featuring a number of elaborate song and dance numbers, it was Lelio’s first film in his native Chile since A fantastic woman.
RELATED: Sebastián Lelio Talks Musical Film ‘The Wave’ About Chile’s May Feminist Protests: ‘It Was an Iconic Moment’
During a Q&A with Deadline’s Melanie Goodfellow in Cannes, Lelio talked about the film and its genre. “We are at a moment in the history of humanity, but also of cinema, where things can no longer be so innocent,” he said. “So if you want to work within a genre, it’s almost your duty, not necessarily to subvert it, but to expand it, to create self-aware narratives. So when you’re working with the tradition of the music genre, you have to think about the genre and why you’re using it. You have to push the boundaries, so it’s not an exercise in nostalgia, as it has been for the last 25 years, with a few exceptions, but rather an act of now.”
Born Sebastián Lelio Watt on March 8, 1974 in Argentina, he moved to Chile as a child with his mother. After graduating from the Chilean Film School, he directed several local projects, including short films, music videos, and a television series, before making his feature film directorial debut with The Sacred Family in 2005. Lelio went on to direct films such as Navity (2009). The year of the Tiger (2011) and Gloria (2013).
After breaking up with A fantastic womanLelio also directed Disobedience (2017) and Gloria Bell (2018) before directing The Wonder. Lelio also wrote or co-wrote every film he directed and served as producer on The wave And Gloria Bell.
Of his many female-focused films, Lelio told Deadline in 2025: “I found the first exercise I did in film school on a tape a while ago. I was about 20 years old and it’s about four women. I realized that it was always there as a real interest. It was never programmatic. And then the world changed, and that dimension became more important.”
Information on survivors was incomplete.
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