SELECTION OF CRITICS:

“On one side, the old dictator pursued by justice. On the other side, his victims, the survivors and family members of the disappeared. Confronting their fates, Patricio Guzmán breaks a quarter of a century’s silence.”

Jean-Claude Raspiengeas. Télérama, Parigi 10 ottobre 2001, no. 2700

“’The Pinochet Case’ is a fascinating documentary (...). A grandiose homage to the women, the dreadful narrators of the tortures they have endured. Difficult to make it more excellent, more clear and more captivating.”

F.T. Zurban, Cannes, 16 maggio 2001, no.7

“It’s the work of a master of his craft. Guzmán’s understanding of the rhythms and snags of documentary composition reach exciting heights, and this is so not because one perceives it while watching the film, which in that moment is pure transparency; rather, it happens once seen, when the film rewinds and is projected in one’s memory, and the sifting action of this internal film viewer then allows the precision and thoroughness of the craftsmanship of the editing to be noticed, along with the surprising source of emotion and poetic warmth that exist in its (exact, and for that reason, cold) calculations.”

Angel Fernández Santos. El País, Madrid 2001.

“The first images of ‘The Pinochet Case’ are of a deserted landscape. There, survivors and judges are looking for evidence, human remains, destroyed and hidden by the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet. This opening sequence, as dry as it is troubling, is at the same height of what the film will be: the struggle of the surviving, against the dictatorship (...) considered a company of oblivion and disappearance. With this annihilation force, with surprising certainty, ‘The Pinochet Case’ reveals one tangible proof after another that confirms the catastrophe.”

Jean-Sebastian Chauvin. Cahier du Cinema, ottobre 2001, no. 561.

“(...) ‘The Pinochet Case’ narrates the genesis of a miracle. Guzmán’s beautiful images allow the resolution of a Pinochet case that will never be examined by any justice system, ever, anywhere.”

Michel Palmiéri. Elle, Paris, 8-14 ottobre 2001, no. 2910.

“Classically constructed around principal characters (the victims, and the Spanish judge Baltasar Garzón and the Chilean judge Juan Guzmán, in particular), ‘The Pinochet Case’ is an optimistic documentary that wants to believe in the justice of man. (...) Well-experienced in documentaries, the filmmaker establishes such contact with his interlocutors that each testimony has enormous density. (...) Without memory, Patricio Guzmán concludes, a country has no future.”

Veronique Soulé. Libération, Parigi, 10 ottobre 2001

“This setting has a double risk: limit itself to a montage of telegenic documents; or enclose itself in a militant and sympathetic rhetoric. ‘The Pinochet Case’ avoids those dangers. The construction of the film is organized by successive waves, like memory bandages that are turned back little by little... Were the things that happened after the military coup known? ... Undoubtedly, they were known, but the strength of the film is in taking the ‘knowing’ as insufficient. From a past half-buried by the military and civil governments, the testimonies make a comeback (...): the arbitrary arrests, the torture, the mass executions and the secret that surrounds the disappeared. Here the second and main achievement of the film intervenes: even if we are well-informed, the physical presence of the concerned persons produces a totally different relationship. The victims, with their way of talking at length, of telling and not telling, of hesitating, the texture of their voices, like the expressions on their faces, conceal an unspeakable strength that surpasses any sense (political, ethical, affective) of what they are saying or want to say. This is also true for Joan Garcés, Allende’s companion and organizer of the combat against the military junta. He speaks only of procedures, but his face, his body, his voice, are like a poignant song. (...) The encounter between the old dictator and Margaret Thatcher comes from a physically perceptible violence. Guzmán goes farther than testimony and farther than denouncement. His film turns into the invocation of a dark world (the world of terror, of oblivion, where the tribulations of the old bent, astute monster draw their mark on the surface of the present day.”

J.M.F. Le Monde, Parigi, 10 ottobre 2001.