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.