Miguel Littin directed El Chacal de Nahueltoro (1969) becoming a figure of the New Latin American Cinema.

Littin was exiled in Mexico shortly after Augusto Pinochet came to power in a military coup, which ousted President Salvador Allende, on September 11, 1973.

[3] After moving to Spain in 1984, Littin decided to enter Chile clandestinely to make a documentary that showed the condition of the country under the Pinochet regime.

It was made the subject of Nobel Laureate Gabriel García Márquez's book Clandestine in Chile: The Adventures of Miguel Littin.

He eventually returned to Chile where he continued to make films, among them Tierra del Fuego, based on the adventures of explorer Julius Popper; and Dawson, Isla 10, about a group of political prisoners sent to Dawson's Island during Pinochet's regime.