Anna Recalde Miranda

In the modern history of Latin America, a direct line runs from the anti-Communist repression of the 1970s to the fight against land defenders and human rights activists today.

Fernando Lugo, the bishop of the poor, won the 2008 presidential elections in Paraguay. After 61 years of hegemony by the Colorado Party and by the dictator Stroessner, this unexpected victory came as a political miracle. But politics is not for saints and the dream turns into a nightmare. Power and Impotence tells the utopia of political change: the adventure of common men accessing power to try and challenge the system from within. In a political thriller settled in stranger-than-fiction Paraguay, we follow their hopes and disappointments from a unique behind-the-scene point of view, until the tragic ending. An uncommon film, an authentic modern Shakespearean drama about power.

After 35 years under the Stroessner dictatorship, the corrupt Colorado Party (the only political party allowed after the democratic transition) ruled Paraguay for 17 years. In 2008, Fernando Lugo, a former bishop running for president, represented the country's hope to finally build a better future. This film chronicles the quixotic struggle of Martín Almada, an internationally recognized human rights activist who discovered the Archives of Terror, as he fights to expose the links between the old dictatorial system and the corrupt democratic government that future president Lugo will inherit.