Being a kid is hard enough without having to endure a military coup. In Machuca, two 11-year-olds from opposite ends of the class divide get caught up in the upheavals that wracked Chile in 1973. Gonzalo Infante (Matias Quer) and Pedro Machuca (Ariel Mateluna) meet after a leftist priest integrates Gonzalo's school with less privileged boys. Spurned by the other rich tykes and disturbed by his parents' disintegrating marriage, Gonzalo is happy to make a new friend and is soon helping Pedro sell flags at demonstrations, being careful not to sell the socialist ones at the right-wing rallies and vice versa.

Despite its inclusion in Sprockets' monthly Globetrotter series and tween-aged leads, Machuca is about as much of a family movie as The Squid and the Whale. The love triangle that emerges between the boys and fellow flag-seller Silvana (Manuela Martelli) also suggests a pint-sized spin on Jules and Jim. Though Andrés Wood's film is more conventional in style than other recent Latin American imports like Lucretia Martel's The Holy Girl, Wood doesn't flinch at portraying the crumbling society's effects on Machuca's youngest characters. It's even more upsetting to see kids witness the hypocrisy of their parents -- when Silvana tells Gonzalo his mother is a "shitbag," we're inclined to agree.