Office Hours: Dr. Pablo Policzer

Dr. Pablo Policzer starts every POLI 415: Politics Through Film class with two things: a Chilean movie and a story from his first day of grad school at MIT, when he learned that political scientists had failed to predict the fall of the Berlin Wall.

His work sits in that very blind spot. Dr. Policzer argues that political science often fails to account for how politics is experienced at the individual level.  He’s especially interested in understanding the traumatic effects political events have on citizens, and how art—more specifically, film—can help untangle our experiences as political subjects.

We sit down with Dr. Policzer in his warmly-lit office, packed with seemingly-infinite knickknacks—from cochayuyo (Chilean seaweed) well past its expiry date, to Georgian swords from the Caucasus, mate gourds and deeply meaningful keepsakes. 

For many, research is something very personal. Is there any specific motivation to why you’re so keen on political science? Why does it matter to you?

P: When I was eight years old, the military took over the country [Chile]. As a result of the 1973 coup, my dad spent a year and a half as a political prisoner. I didn’t hear about political science until I was an adult. 

When I was an undergraduate student, I found that political science gave me very powerful analytical tools to make sense of what happened. And I kind of kept just pulling on that thread and following, taking the next step. And one day I woke up… and I was a political scientist.

Would you consider yourself obsessive? What are you obsessive about?

P: I think as an academic, we have to be somewhat obsessive. We're kind of obsessive about different things. One obsession of mine has been trying to make sense of the legacies of dictatorship[s]. Not just from the perspective of just focusing on Chile—although I've done a lot of work that's focused on Chile—but from a more general perspective.

Are there any objects in your office that you have a special connection to?

P: I'm kind of interested in quirky trinkets that have a political connection. 

Why do you think students resonate with your teaching style?

P: I have to say, I really love teaching. And I really love the personal contact with the students, whether it be in a small group, a small seminar or a larger classroom. 

I've taught, for example, the POLI 201: Intro to Political Science class, a large class of 250 students. And each of those courses has a different dynamic. 

Being able to see that what you're teaching lands and creates some kind of a spark, that for me is what [teaching] is all about.

My approach is to move away from [being] the “sage on the stage”, and practice the exercise where students take the ball and run with it. 

My goal is not to tell them what to think, but just to maybe provoke them into doing their own work that will expand the materials and the ideas in the class.

Is there any specific class that you teach that stands out to you?

P: It would have to be POLI 415: Politics Through Film. I structured the course around a very simple question: what can we learn about politics through film that we don't already know through the standard texts in political science? We know a lot through the very powerful analytical tools that help us make sense of things in very insightful and deep ways. But film allows us to explore the inner emotional spaces and aspects of politics that also matter.

What is your hidden talent?

P: I've been taking part in a fiction writing group, where I've been writing some non-academic, non-analytical pieces. I wouldn't say it's a talent, but it's a skill that I'm really happy to be exercising. And it's new, it's different, and I'm really happy to be doing it.

Outside of teaching and research, what does ‘giving back’ look like for you?

P: I started by doing some volunteer work in my own neighborhood association. But then with the pandemic, things changed and that period of my volunteer work ended. 

Since then, I've been doing more volunteer work with the Latin American community. I have a longstanding connection with the Chilean community in Calgary and over the years we've brought speakers to have important conversations.

Recently, I’ve been part of the organizing committee for the first Calgary Latin American Film Festival (CLAFF), which is taking place May 29-31, 2026. I was invited to join this group, and I was just delighted to take part.

Film festivals play such a big role in community storytelling—what drew you to being involved with the Calgary Latin American Film Festival (CLAFF)?

P:  The festival was really the brainchild of Josué Ramírez, a Venezuelan friend with great experience in grassroots organization and advocacy work involving the Venezuelan and Latin American community in Calgary. And because he also has a love of film, I thought this was a great opportunity. 

To paraphrase the Godfather: "It was an offer I couldn't refuse".

Top films as a self-proclaimed cinephile?

1. The Lives of Others would be right up there; this is a film I screen in my POLI 415 class.
2. When I was 13 years old, I saw Apocalypse Now as it had just come out and I haven't been the same person since
3. I used The Godfather: Part 2 in class, but I think of both (Part 1 and 2) as one long film
4. A film like 2001: A Space Odyssey is one of these films that just completely blows your mind and helps you see the world in a different way.

What are your three must-watch Latin American films?

1. Machuca:  This brilliant film details the friendship of two 10-year-old boys in 1973, just before and just after the Chilean coup. One, an upper middle-class boy and the other, very much from the lower classes. They come together as friends in these very unlikely circumstances. But through their friendship, we see society breaking apart. It's a wonderful film!
2. Chile ‘76: This is a story told through the perspective of this upper middle-class woman in 1976, one of the darkest periods of the dictatorship. And she's asked to help this young man of whom she doesn't quite know the circumstances. Through this experience, she becomes aware of the reality, that all the horrible violence that is never far from the surface there. It's a terrific film. And I've just written a paper comparing both of those films [Chile '76 and Machuca], so those are fresh in my mind.
3. The Official Story: A movie from the late 80s, one of the first to really grapple with the impact of the dictatorship in Argentina. Soon after the end of the dictatorship, just beginning to look back on what happened.

All three films I've just mentioned are about the legacies of dictatorship, which maybe tells you something about my "obsession".

Why do you say political scientists aren’t good at predicting events?

P: Over the years, I've come to understand that we're not good at predicting things, not despite our best available concepts and methods and theories, but in many cases because of our best available concepts, methods and theories.

Our theories are powerful; they allow us to see things in a lot of depth, but sometimes they also blind us to the things that may be really important.

Some colleagues make the analogy that maybe we should think of our work as something like seismologists. We have a pretty good understanding of where the political tectonic plates are and how they shift. But we can't predict when exactly the next earthquake will happen. 

So, I think we [political scientists] shouldn't claim to be in the business of predicting when the next earthquake is going to strike.

Is there any beef between political scientists and policy analysts?

P: There's always going to be a tension there, and it's a healthy tension between those who are in the trenches seeing things up close and those of us who see things more from 30,000 feet in the air perspective. 

The people who are really in the weeds, seeing each tree, each branch—[they] keep us honest. But, at some point, you also have to be able to see the forest and say, "What is this all about? What's the big picture here?"

I don’t think that when there is tension, that it should be resolved... that it should be done away with. It’s a tension that keeps everybody honest.