Unresolved Pain and the Spanish “Pact of Forgetting”: Almudena Carracedo and Robert Bahar Discuss The Silence of Others

Executive produced by the Almodóvars, and nabbing the Panorama Audience Award for Best Documentary and Peace Film Prize at this year’s Berlinale (not to mention, most recently, the Grand Jury Award at Sheffield Doc/Fest), Almudena Carracedo and Robert Bahar’s The Silence of Others was one of the most compelling films I caught at Hot Docs back in April. It was also unnervingly revelatory, as the Spotlight on Documentaries at IFP Week project — which will be co-presented by IFP tonight at New York’s Human Rights Watch Film Festival — deals with a disturbing piece of buried history I knew nearly nothing about.

Indeed, I’d never even heard of the “Argentine Lawsuit,” an attempt by the victims of the Franco regime’s 40-year reign of torture and murder to gain redress in Buenos Aires because Spanish law prevents any dictatorship-related crimes from being prosecuted. (Though the fact that Spain’s shameful 1977 amnesty ruling was dubbed “the Pact of Forgetting” indicates that erasure was also likely by design.)

Filmmaker was fortunate enough to speak with the co-directors, who previously collaborated on 2008’s award-winning Made in L.A., prior to the doc’s NYC premiere at HRWFF (June 19th at the Film Society of Lincoln Center, June 20th at the IFC Center).

To read my interview visit Filmmaker magazine.