The Silence of Others

El silencio de otros

multiple awards and nominations, including:

GOYA 33 (Spain, 2019) - Best Documentary Feature

Santa Fe Independent FF (2018) - Jury Award: Best Documentary Feature

José María Forqué Awards (2019) - Best Documentary

Jihlava Int'l Doc FF (2018) - Best Testimony on Politics

Hot Docs Canadian Int'l Doc Fest (2018) – Top 10 Audience Favourite

Int'l FF and Forum on Human Rights (2018) – Special Mention of the Jury for Creative Documentary

Int'l Documentary Association (2018) – Pare Lorentz Award

Hamptons Int'l FF (2018) – Victor Rabinowitz & Joanne Grant Award For Social Justice

Berlin Int'l FF (2018) - Panorama Audience Award and Peace Film Award

Festival des Libertés (2018) - Prix FIDH and Prox Salvador Allende

Sheffield Int'l Doc Fest (2018) – Grand Jury Award: Best Documentary

Thessaloniki Doc FF (2019) - Audience Award

Traverse City FF (2018) – Founders Prize: Best Foreign Non-Fiction Film

Forqué Award (Spain) - Best Feature Documentary

Int'l Doc FF of Amsterdam (2018) - number 2 Audience Favourite

Screens with:

A Night At The Garden

Shocking archive footage of 20 000 American Nazis filling Madison Square Gardens in New York in 1939. … Read More »

The victory of Generalissimo Franco in Spain in 1939 cleared the way for fascism’s meteoric acceptance in the Europe of the nineteen-thirties. What Franco could get away with gave strength to Hitler and Mussolini. A civilian population blanket-bombed (with the aid of Nazi planes) was the first example of what is now common practice. In this mesmerising film, produced by famed Spanish director Pedro Almodovar, the survivors of human- rights abuses of horrifying dimensions battle to bring their persecutors to justice. After 40 years of Franco’s rule, the Spanish government still imposes an amnesia on the past, making it impossible to prosecute historical abuses. The film follows the participants in the historic Argentine Lawsuit who prosecute the abuses in Spain from beyond the borders. An inspiring film and a tribute to the tenacity of those who will not relent.

Panel Discussion: The Silence of Others

With the film as a point of departure, the panel will reflect on the aftermaths of violence. The discussion will focus on political compromises reached in Spain and South Africa, and the extent to which transitional justice initiatives may have deprived families of victims and survivors of truth and justice. While the TRC granted amnesty to apartheid-era political perpetrators of crimes relating to human rights violations and reparations and rehabilitation to the victims, in Spain the Pact of Forgetting ‘devised in the wake of Franco’s 1975 death, decreed that the legacy of Francoism be essentially erased from the national record…in the interest of forward-looking reconciliation between rival political factions.‘

The demand by descendants to exhume the remains of those buried anonymously, often in mass graves, during the Spanish Civil War resonate with South Africa’s apartheid-era ‘missing’ or ‘disappeared’, just as the victims of torture in Spain speak to those from the apartheid era. This will form the basis of a discussion on how the two countries are reckoning with their history and engaging with the political context of the missing.

Panel organised by the Forensic History Project, Department of History, UWC