Director’s statement.

Recently I’ve managed to close a cicle in my life. This story carried down by my family, and so passionately told to me by my mother María Alicia, has been imprinted so vividly in my mind ever since I was a child that today I can’t help but see it as a movie in my mind.

When I finally understood its narrative possibilities the story began to set in my mind. It took me a while to acquire the knowledge to feel comfortable to take this story out of the stasis I had left it in, but today I’m a professional screenwriter, and I feel I’m in a good place to finally face it.

So, how did I start? First I made the decision to get to know the facts in this story thoroughly. I had a chance to meet Víctor Contreras, the senator, fifteen years ago, after he came back from his ten year long exile. On the other hand, I also had my mother’s testimony, but this things weren’t enough. And so, I had to dig deeper into the people that lived through it all: the remaining nine of the eleven brothers and sisters from the Aguilera family.

Between the months of September and December of 1973 (when this story takes place), Julio must risk the safety of his family to save the life of his brother in law, a communist senator being persecuted by the new regime. Him and his brother in law always fought when it came to politics, as they stood in opposite sides of the situation, as heated as the arguments may have been, they were always respectful of one another.

Now, through a series of interviews recorded recently in 2014, I gathered each viewpoint of each of the remaining brothers who witnessed and took part in this story. Thus allowing me to reconstruct the story as it happened by means of observation and recounting of everyone’s memories from those times. Nine different perspectives overlapping and eventually creating one story.

Not only did I prove the central conflict of this story to be true, but I also uncovered hidden subplots, such as how parents and children were to one another, secret romances and love affairs, political intrigue, ruthless violence and the natural irony in life which is never casual. I aim to tackle all this different issues under the commanding plot of family values over political ideology.

I must be honest. I wouldn’t want this to be another movie based on the Coup d’etat that took place in 1973. There are already plenty of those around, and for lack of a better word it seems unoriginal at this point. I want this to be a movie about a family, about its values, about how the Aguilera’s lived through this experience and remained a family. It’s a true story that is close to me, and I want this movie to be my opera prima and for it to speak of me and my family.