Green Is the New Red [+lee también:
crítica
entrevista: Anna Recalde Miranda
ficha de la película], the new documentary by Italian-Paraguayan director Anna Recalde Miranda, weaves together personal and historical memory while exposing the knotty relationship between the Paraguayan dictatorship, Operation Condor and the country’s land-grabbing laws that ostracise indigenous people. Cineuropa met up with the director after the film world-premiered at IDFA, in the International Competition.

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Cineuropa: You started filming Green Is the New Red in 2018, and then you picked up the camera again in 2021. What had changed in the way you envisioned the film in the meantime?
Anna Recalde Miranda: The whole context around us changed very fast in those few years, so the film became a visual manifestation of worldwide disasters. Back then, there wasn’t much visibility around [what was happening in] Paraguay. Then, 2018 was the year of Greta Thunberg and Bolsonaro. Cynically speaking, Bolsonaro was good for our film because he embodied that violence we were up against. In 2019, there was a huge fire in Amazonia, and it was criminally organised. This context made it easier to tell the story, in a way. 

How did this sense of urgency affect the filming?
Paul, one of our interviewees, passed away, and Martín, who was most important to this story, was becoming weaker, so we had to speed things up. There was also COVID-19 in between… But we also found new allies.

You did a lot of research during lockdown, I suppose?
Yes; during that time, we connected with Hernan, Bruno and Julia, all of the other characters that we were able to contact via Zoom before we went to film them. In between, we were looking for people who had the competencies to give specific examples of this connection between land grabbing and the dictatorial regime.

You narrate the film, and the voice-over is in Italian. Was that always the intention?
No, not until the very end! I preferred not to expose myself like that, but we made a choice together with the editors. We needed it. To be honest, I didn't even think about my Italian-ness, because during that period, I was very much inside the Paraguayan environment, which I feel so close to. Then again, speaking in Italian gives me this distance and the point of view of someone who is not from there, even if I am connected to the place.

At times, during the interviews, you make yourself known as a presence. How did you decide when to listen, and when to respond and ask questions?
It happened in the editing; it was a long process to strike the right balance. We tried to find a good equilibrium between my personal relationship with the people and the huge amounts of information. We did so much research about everything, including the World Anti-Communist League, and we checked the accuracy of everything said. As a result, the first cut was three hours long, so in slimming it down, we had to balance that with the human side of the story.

This is also apparent in the way you show historical archives and the present as well. There’s special attention paid to the documents, more than them being carriers of facts. How did you film the Archives of Terror?
It’s an intimate space for me. Every time I go to Asunción, I visit the same two places: the archives and La Técnica [the torture centre]. It’s special because of Martín and all of the wonderful people who work there; they are like family. The thing is, there, you can touch the documents and feel the semi-destroyed paper in your hands. It’s very rare. Also, because these are the last remnants of people who disappeared, the archives become an inhabited place.

How would you feel if Green Is the New Red were to be perceived as an activist film?
For me, personally, the label of activism is the best one in the world. I have a lot of respect for activists, and the people who motivated this film are such. I wanted to pay homage to Martín, Paul and all of the people who appear in it: to me, they are all activists in some way. Their strength and courage are the best part of humanity! So, for me, it's a good term, “activism”. Then, it’s true that, if we come from the cultural environment of French cinema, a militant film is something bad, so sometimes it’s not good for the film itself to be labelled as “activist”. I don’t see it as a militant film, but rather as an engaged and committed one.