Distinct modes of social and psychological angst are noted in a significant number of
films from Chile and New Zealand, becoming most evident in the way family relations are
portrayed, and in various modes through which the protagonists relate to their natural and
social environment. This article focuses on the films In My Father’s Den (Brad McGann, New
Zealand, 2004) and B-Happy (Gonzalo Justiniano, Chile, 2003). The narrative of both these
films centres on lower-middle-class adolescent girls who reside in semi-rural areas, living in
a state of unease due to the difficulties they confront in finding social and familial protection,
which drives them to yearn and search for alternative geographical, cultural and affective
landscapes. This comparative examination suggests that the crisis of identity displacement
observed in New Zealand society engenders more tragic results than those gestated by
the ‘concrete’ socio-economic exclusion found in Chile, indicating perhaps that sociopsychological
anxieties require more complex and intricate strategies of recognition and
eradication than those created by structural forms of social abuse.