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Six years after her debut feature and 2012 Rotterdam Tiger Award winner Thursday Till Sunday (De Jueves a Domingo), 33-year-old Chilean director Dominga Sotomayor attended the 71st Locarno Festival for the world premiere of her new feature, Too Late To Die Young (Tarde Para Morir Joven). A subtle, tender coming of age set in a commune nestled atop Santiago’s cordillera in 1990s Chile, Too Late To Die Young entered the Swiss fest’s official competition, and just landed a spot at this year’s New York Film Festival.

A multi-character portmanteau of a self-sufficient, environmentally friendly community of hippie-like adults and kids, Sotomayor’s work zeroes in on three young commune members, Sofía (Demian Hernández), a 16-year-old itching to leave the place to move in with her estranged mother, Lucas (Antar Machado), a teenager helplessly besotted with Sofía, and Carla (Magdalena Tótoro), a 10-year-old way too smart and mature for her own age.

Halfway through Dominga Sotomayor’s movingly tender coming-of-age tale Too Late to Die Young (Tarde Para Morir Joven), my mind jolted back to a movie I saw and instantly fell for a couple of months prior, Carla Simón’s Summer 1993. It took me a while to figure out why. Summer 1993 is set in early 1990s Catalunya; Sotomayor’s takes place at the decade’s outset, but on the opposite side of the world: a commune nestled in the arid cordillera towering above Chile’s capital, Santiago. Yet at some fundamental level, the two films speak the same language. Underlying Sotomayor’s follow-up to her 2012 feature debut and Rotterdam Tiger Award winner Thursday Till Sunday is a deep-seated nostalgia – the same longing for a long-gone era that rang achingly true in Summer 1993.

Inspired by the 33-year-old director’s childhood in the Ecological Community of Peñalolén – an environmentally friendly and self-sufficient commune...

Back in form after her underwhelming sophomore film “Mar,” Chilean director Dominga Sotomayor returns to an exploration of childhood and its intersection with a particular grown-up world, one where idealism is no protection from inner emotional turmoil. “Too Late to Die Young” springs from the director’s experiences growing up in the alternative ecological community of Peñalolén, yet she’s broadened the perspective by focusing on two teens on the brink of adult awareness, silently examining their confused sensations while nonjudgmentally witnessing the dysfunction around them. While the film is perhaps longer than necessary, and the adult characters could use some fleshing out, this is a satisfying sensorial work, unmistakably grounded in independent South American cinema, and should see a thriving festival life.

Though only her third feature, “Too Late to Die Young” features an opening shot that’s unmistakably Sotomayor: a boy asleep in an old car. Harking back...