DocEdge kicks off in Wel­ling­ton on 13th June (run­ning to the 23rd) and we’ve been for­tu­nate enough to pre­view some of the films that will be show­ing. First up…

The Silence of Others

Dir­ec­ted by Almudena Car­rucedo and Robert Bahar

María Martín pins up her long grey hair with gnarled hands, then struggles with a walk­er along a coun­try road, where she attaches a bunch of homegrown flowers to a road­side fence. ‘I was six years old when they came for my moth­er,’ she whis­pers. ‘People from the town, Franco sup­port­ers.’ Inter­spersed are dis­tinct­ively Span­ish-look­ing shots, olive trees, a goat nib­bling. ‘This is the graves­ite…’ she says, indic­at­ing the road. ‘The day after tomor­row, the flowers will be gone.’

Filmed over six years, The Silence of Oth­ers relates the stor­ies of sev­er­al vic­tims of war crimes per­pet­rated under Fran­cisco Fran­co’s nearly forty-year dic­tat­or­ship, as they fight for justice, and battle a form­al, state-induced cul­tur­al amne­sia. Fol­low­ing his death in 1975, the Span­ish par­lia­ment adop­ted the policy of the “pact of for­get­ting”, under which the offi­cial record of events was not to be covered by the media or taught in schools. After act­iv­ists cam­paigned for the release of those imprisoned for cri­ti­cising the estab­lish­ment, the amnesty law was passed in 1977, mean­ing anti-Franco protest­ors went free, but war crimes under the regime – includ­ing exe­cu­tions, tor­ture, and stolen babies – also went unpun­ished. The coun­try entered a peri­od when the crimes went undoc­u­mented and undis­cussed. Cul­tur­al monu­ments such as streets named in hon­our of the regime, per­sist to the mod­ern era.

In 2010, a group of vic­tims filed their cases in Argen­tina, via the mech­an­ism of ‘Uni­ver­sal Jur­is­dic­tion,’ which allows states to claim crim­in­al jur­is­dic­tion over a per­son regard­less of nation­al­ity of the accused, and the loc­a­tion where the crimes were com­mit­ted. As time drags on, and eld­erly vic­tims are dying without see­ing justice, the move­ment has come to the view that time is being used against them as a weapon. The law­suit con­tin­ues, in both Argen­tina and Spain.

While tech­nic­ally rough in places – hand­held cam­era work dom­in­ates – the film makes evid­ent the intim­acy and trust built up between the sub­jects and film-makers dur­ing the long peri­od of its cre­ation. The aes­thet­ic hand of exec­ut­ive pro­du­cer Alm­od­óvar seems evid­ent in the title and clos­ing shots, circ­ling on the shot-up memori­al sculp­tures by Fran­cisco Cedenilla, but it’s the emo­tion­al stor­ies of the vic­tims, as they con­nect and gain momentum, that drive the film. Fol­low­ing its screen­ing in Seville, the film received a stand­ing ova­tion, with many audi­ence mem­bers hold­ing up pho­tos of fam­ily mem­bers whose remains still lie in mass graves around Spain.

See book­ing and ses­sion info here.