Mixing history and fiction, the film shows the dramatic events of the suppression of Communists in Chile in 1948 and how the poet, diplomat, politician and Nobel Prize winner Pablo Neruda had to go on the run, eventually escaping on horseback over the Andes.

In 1946, Chile's president Gabriel González Videla wins the election with the support of the Communists, but later turns against them, banning the party and ordering mass arrests.

Delia destroys his confidence by saying that Neruda, with his poetry and political commitment, is reality and will endure, but Peluchonneau is merely a fiction.

[1] The film was released in Chile on 11 August 2016 by 20th Century Fox,[15][16] in the United States on 16 December 2016,[17][18] and in France on 4 January 2017.

The website's consensus reads: "Inventive, intelligent, and beautifully filmed, Neruda transcends the traditional biopic structure to look at the meaning beyond the details of its subject's life.

"[20] Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 82 out of 100, based on 28 critics, indicating "universal acclaim".