Open City Documentary Festival

7 – 13 September 2022
in London

The Crosses + Q&A

Location Bertha DocHouse, Director Teresa Arredondo, Carlos Vásquez Méndez, Country Chile, Duration 80, Previous Festivals & Awards FIDMarseille 2018, Valdivia International Film Festival 2018 (Winner: Special Jury Prize - Chilean Feature), Mar del Plata International Film Festival 2018 (Winner: Tato Miller Award for Best Latin American Film), Mar del Plata International Film Festival 2018 (Winner: Latin American Competition Best MERCOSUR Feature Film) & more, Date Event has passed

Only days after the 1973 military coup against the Allende government, a group of nineteen union members in a paper factory were disappeared without trace. The case remained a mystery for forty years, until a policeman involved in the massacre finally broke the pact of silence. Taking his confession alongside testimony from the victims’ families —all voiced by actors—the filmmakers forensically unravel the events leading to the murders, using stark 16mm photography to depict the landscape like a crime scene. A bold and formally rigorous work, The Crosses bravely unearths a dark moment in Chile’s political history that for years had been buried in silence.

UK Premiere

Supported by Cervantes Institute London

Followed by a Q&A with co-director Carlos Vásquez Méndez, hosted by Laura Allsop, a writer and critic based in London, whose writing has appeared in Dazed, AnOther and Sight & Sound

Read an essay on The Crosses by Jaime Grijalba