A well-crafted artistic composition with beautiful scenery, set against the pain, remorse, and human toll of the repression era in Latin America, known as “Plan Condor.”
A story that was censored for decades, silenced by forced silence, now comes to light in a major motion picture.
“Olvidados” was the Bolivian submission for the 87th Academy® Awards for Best Foreign Film.
A phone call from New York to Bolivia triggers flashbacks of a dying general. His turbulent past haunts him—from his CIA military training to the era of repression. These abuses of power, torture, executions, and enforced disappearances became a human tragedy across all of South America in the 1970s.
Those were the golden years of the Cold War, when the USA fought against the Soviet Union’s communist penetration in Latin America.
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| Copyright © Cinema Libre Studio, 2015 |
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| Copyright © Cinema Libre Studio, 2015 |
The casualty counts were in the thousands. The extraordinary reconstruction of the settings of the Repression Era in “Los Olvidados” shows in detail how these crimes were committed, the impunity and lack of remorse, and recreates the dark atmosphere of its mysterious past.
Damián Alcázar (“The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian”) is a chameleon actor who has played victim roles in films such as “Herod’s Law/La Ley de Herodes,” “El Infierno,” and “The Perfect Dictatorship/La dictadura perfecta.” He now plays the magnanimous General José Mendieta in “Olvidados.” Damián Alcázar also plays the bad guy terrifically.
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| D. Carlos Bolado. Photo by José Alberto Hermosillo. |
Director Carlos Bolado (“Bajo California, el límite del tiempo,” “Tlatelolco, Verano de 68,” “Colosio, el asesinato”) assembled an artistic composition of beautiful images and strong performances. Still, it also shows the pain of victims, oppressors, and their families.
Bolado states in an interview: “Reality is worse than fiction,” meaning it’s almost impossible to write or depict the tragedy of Operación Condor in a movie.
The camera captures the beauty but remains rigid and stiff, creating an unnecessary claustrophobic effect in the film, leaving us to wonder what will happen next, yet nothing else does.
The editing lost its tempo; it needed to be organic, logical, and balanced, with a better structure, to make the sequences more harmonious and create a significant impact on the situations of agony experienced by the main characters. A stronger dramatic punch was needed.
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| Copyright © Cinema Libre Studio 2015 |
There are similar films on the subject of repression and torture, including the Argentinean Oscar winner “The Secret in Their Eyes” (2009), the brutal Argentinean film “Garage Olimpo” (1999), directed by Marco Bechis, and the Mexican production “The Violin” (2005), directed by Francisco Vargas. All of these films reflect the hunger people have for justice and for those atrocities to be recognized.
The most significant accomplishment of “Olvidados” is its strong message about how people lived and died, and how the very few lucky ones survived the repression caused by the absurd policies implemented by the Condor Operation.
“Olvidados” left a feeling of emptiness and desolation in people’s hearts for the lost ones, especially for “los desaparecidos…"
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