The Silence of Others

With the passing of the Amnesty Law in Spain in 1977, all political prisoners from the Franco era were finally released. The major drawback of this scheme was the following prohibition against prosecuting those who had committed such horrible deeds during the regime. As a consequence, even today there is much disagreement about what would be better for Spain: to shed more light on what actually happened, or to let the past be.

From six years of film material, directors Almudena Carracedo and Robert Bahar present various individuals who have been affected by the Franco regime in different ways: The old women who lays down flowers on the highway where her mother was dumped by Franco’s men; the hunt for one of the most infamous interrogators, Antonio Gonzalez Pacehco (alias Billy the Kid), who lives close by one of the victims of his torture; and the 80-year-old woman fighting a bitter struggle to have her father’s bones extracted from one of the many mass graves of Spain.

The Silence of Others is a distressing and immensely important documentary, highlighting what is for many people an unknown part of history. The film’s primary focus is on the growing grassroots movement who are taking their stories to international courtrooms in their search for justice and acknowledgement.