The second feature-length documentary by Chilean-Spanish filmmakers Gabriela Pena and Picho García, Where the Silence Is Heard [+lee también:
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In this autobiographical film, Pena grew up listening to the story of a country her family had to flee, of a grandfather who survived and of a home left behind. In time, she came to understand that a part of her mother remained trapped inside those walls, and that this invisible absence shaped the distance between them.

Fifty years later, she decides to travel to the city of Valparaíso to reopen the doors of that house and confront what was left unresolved. Among cracked walls and inherited silences, she restores the lost home and recovers a long-suppressed emotional story, shaped by exile and the violence of the Chilean dictatorship.

Amidst the tender reunion with her grandparents and the now physical distance from her mother, she must decide whether to keep hiding her feelings or, for the first time, break the cycle of wounds that has shaped three generations, and finally come to understand her mother – and herself.

“This film began with Gabriela’s need to confront what she had inherited: the weight of exile, dictatorship and the silences that shaped her family,” say the directors. “Picho somehow belongs to the same historical legacy, but from the other side: that of persons who remained in the country during and after the dictatorship.

“The birth of our son gave the film its clearest meaning: within a history marked by what is carried across generations, we have witnessed the beginning of a fourth, already present in every image of the film.”

Directed and written by Pena, co-directed by García and edited by both, alongside co-editors Melisa Miranda and Tin Dirdamal, with a score composed by Santiago Jara, Where the Silence Is Heard was produced by Pena and García for Grieta Cine (Chile/Spain), and co-produced by Gabriela Sandoval for Cine Matriz (Chile) and Efthymia Zymvragaki for Gris Medio (Spain).

Check out our exclusive trailer below: