Directing
In July 2005 a huge explosion in the Guatemalan Capital leads to the discovery of the historic archive of the National Police. On the grounds of the today's Police Academy used to be located the island, the secret prison of notorious National Police squads.And here millions of documents appeared. Aided by an extraordinary visual end emotional interaction, the film traces the story of a tragedy and finds prove for inconceivable atrocities committed by the Security Forces. It is also a movie about a young generation of archive workers willing to free their society from the stranglehold of its own history.
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For more than a century, Guatemala has been home to a small yet highly influential German community. Its prosperity began with the coffee boom and has continued, almost uninterrupted, to the present day. Convinced of belonging to a superior culture, its members sought to impose their model of civilization on Guatemala. Elder coffee barons present faded photographs, and through their stories, the history of colonization unfolds. But the film shifts its gaze toward the other, toward the Indigenous people who labor on the plantations. The film portrays several generations of families and, without commentary, presents twentieth-century attitudes that time has relativized but not changed. A journey through questions of power, identity, and civilization. Based on years of extensive research, it offers a new analysis of colonialism and its destructive consequences in Guatemala and Latin America.
