Chile in 1976. Carmen is middle-aged and bourgeois. Her days in a small village on the Chilean seaside pass by muffled. She takes care of the renovation of the family holiday house, of her grandchildren, and of a mysterious young man with a wounded leg, who turns out to be a political opponent of the Pinochet dictatorship. Through him, she gets in contact with the resistance and finally faces the brutality of the political system she is a part of. As Pinochet is heard on a TV broadcast justifying his brutal presidential approach, Carmen finds her daily existence governed by an increasing sense of fear.
“For many people, the priests often represented a valuable help. /…/ It was not my intention to praise the Church, because their role in those years was problematic, but I also wanted to show the contradictions of those times. I don’t want to hide that those people, that were part of the Church or higher classes, were privileged. They definitely had more chances to save themselves, so it was also easier for them to become politically active. Therefore, I also wanted to touch upon the guilt, and how much the privileged classes were brought to action because of guilt feelings.”
- Manuela Martelli