El silencio de otros (2018)

Thumbnail | 300×300 px | Image of the Memory Lookout in El Torno (Cáceres), by artist Francisco Cedenilla Carrasco. Filmed over six years in a direct, intimate style, the movie follows victims and survivors of the Franco regime involved in the so-called “Argentine Lawsuit,” launched on April 14, 2010, before the courts of Argentina. The aim of this legal action was to have the crimes against humanity committed by members of the Franco dictatorship investigated, their perpetrators identified, and them criminally punished. Relying on the United Nations’ international legislation on Universal Jurisdiction, we, the victims of Francoism, filed Lawsuit 4591/2010 at Federal National Criminal and Correctional Court No. 1 in Buenos Aires, Argentina, presided over by Judge María Servini de Cubría. The case was entitled “N.N. for genocide and/or crimes against humanity committed in Spain by the Franco dictatorship between July 17, 1936, the start of the civil-military coup, and June 15, 1977, the date of the first democratic elections.” The movie follows survivors of the Franco regime in their search for justice, including María Martín López, Ascensión Mendieta, and Chato Galante, among others. The directors interview people who have been unable to locate their murdered loved ones and wish to lay them to rest; women whose newborn children were taken from them; and people who protested against the dictatorship and were tortured. In every case, these people are given names, faces, and tears. Produced in association with El Deseo by Esther García Rodríguez and Agustín and Pedro Almodóvar, the documentary tells of the search for the thousands of people who disappeared during the Franco era, and of the struggle against forgetting by those who continue to demand justice for their families.