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NO is the 3^rd film by Pablo Larraín and it is set in the last years of the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet. In particular, it focuses on the advertising campaign conducted by the opposition to convince Chile to vote "No" in the plebiscite, called by the dictatorship, that would in fact end the Pinochet’s regime. 

This movie stands out first because of its technique: it is recorded on U-Matic, the most used television video format of the 80s. With this technical choise, the filmmaker is able to give an homogeneous look to the assembly of the actual film and a lot of real footage, consisting mainly of pieces of the fifteen minutes television spots the No party was allowed to broadcast every day before the vote.

The real protagonist of "No" is a form of mass communication that makes boundaries blurry: not only the ones between reality and the plausible audiovisual stories that are built on it, but also the ones between reality and stories on one side and advertising on the other. The political conflict in the film arises as a matter of use for such messages.

The main creative person of the campaign (Saavedra) has a life that looks like a commercial: he earns enough to have a house and a car that resemble the promises of the American dream. Habits like walking down the street skateboarding and playing with an electric train, originally bought for his son, indicate that also he still has the mental age of a five years old (to a kid this age his former partner attributes the sketches for the campaign).

The trait that anchors Saavedra to society, one which corresponds to the violence of another Larrain's movie, is competitiveness: he has a rivalry going on both with the people from the No campaign and with the manager of the agency he works for, a man who supports the regime and will eventually run its campaing.  

This film deepens the link between commercial and political conflicts, focusing on how the model of a  material society imposed by the dictatorship gave birth to that need for electoral marketing that paradoxically led to the end of the dictatorship itself.

The film marks the distance from an era in which speeches conquered the popular participation, but it does sp without going deeper into detail about how the advertising campaign managed to build up synergy with the social protest and the political work that was done to be able to change the government.  

It is a most enlightening film about the problems of a democratic society that put an end to a dictatorship by voting, a practice made voide years earlier by a military golpe. 

Director: Pablo Larraín

Writers: Pedro Peirano (screenplay), Antonio Skármeta (play)

Stars: Gael García Bernal, Alfredo Castro, Luis Gnecco