A Doc Wants to Help Paraguay End the Silence on Its Longest-Running Dictatorship (Exclusive Berlin Trailer)
In 1989, not only the Berlin Wall finally came down. That same year, Alfredo Stroessner’s 35-year dictatorship in Paraguay fell, marking the end of one of the world’s longest-running authoritarian regimes. Juanjo Pereira’s documentary Under the Flags, the Sun (Bajo las banderas, el sol), his feature-length directorial debut, revisits it in ways most people have never seen before.
The movie is one of the few docs in the latest Panorama sidebar at Berlin and one of the rare film from Paraguay making it into the festival lineup. Ahead of its world premiere in the Panorama Dokumente program of the 75th edition of the Berlin Film Festival on Monday, THR can unveil an exclusive trailer for the documentary below.
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The fall of the Stroessner regime also led to the abandonment of the audiovisual archives that had cemented its power. “This material, crafted to shape a national identity and celebrate the regime, was left to fade from memory,” a synopsis highlights. “Decades later, a trove of unseen and long-forgotten footage – in the form of newsreels, public television broadcasts, propaganda films and declassified documents – has been recovered from both Paraguay and abroad and reveals the hidden mechanisms of power behind Stroessner’s rule.” It shows “how the past is appropriated to indoctrinate as well as the construction of a national imagery and the cult of Stroessner.”
As such, the film is also “a visual journey through the history of the media of the 20th century and delivers an archaeology of the present in a country where the descendants of the regime’s leaders still rule,” as the Berlinale website points out.
The trailer shows just some of the treasure trove of footage in black and white, as well as in color that Pereira sifted through. In one scene, it features Stroessner, talking about “the wishes and views of the people.” The trailer also sees him touting how he has been uniting his country — but the images tell a very different story.
“In Paraguayan primary and secondary schools, they don’t teach about Stroessner’s dictatorship or the many other regimes in the country’s history,” Pereira says. And he explains that he made the film “to piece together found archives and understand how that era shaped society, my contemporaneity, thoughts and emotions. Though I did not live through these events, they feel ever-present, shaping my worldview and deepest emotions.”
Adds the filmmaker: “In a rural country where fear silences voices — of losing land, livelihood, or security — Paraguay remains isolated in the regional press, its people carrying a somber silence. Unlike its Latin American neighbors, Paraguay never truly engaged in a memory exercise after its last dictatorship fell. The silences here run deep.”
Under the Flags, the Sun was produced by Ivana Urízar for Cine Mío, Paula Zyngierman and
Leandro Listorti for MaravillaCine, Gabriela Sabaté for Sabaté Films, and by Pereira. It was co-produced by Bird Street Production and Lardux Films. Welt Film is the associate producer. Cinephil is handling worldwide sales rights.
Check out the trailer for Under the Flags, the Sun below.
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