El Secreto de la Señora

The film mixes fiction and documentary in an unconventional cinematographic style, to narrate a poetic adventure that encounters the mythical universe of the writer and the Paraguay of yesterday and today. Augusto Roa Bastos, the greatest Paraguayan writer and 1989 Cervantes Prize winner, author of "The Thunder Between the Leaves", "Son of Man", "Yo el Supremo" and "El Fiscal" among others, returns from exile and undertakes a geographical journey and at the same time dreamlike to Iturbe, his childhood town, searching for the land and the characters of his literary fictions to write his novel titled "Contravida." The writer thus participates in a dual condition: as an interpreter of Paraguayan reality and as a protagonist of his own imaginary universe.

This Super 8 short film was discovered on May 22, 2024, at the Paraguayan-German Cultural Institute in Asunción. The film is the result of a workshop produced by the ICPA's film department in 1987, led by filmmaker Marie Louise Alemann, a pioneer of experimental cinema in Argentina.

The office of Tito Juan Vera was to portray the magic of cinema to the inhabitants of the interior of Paraguay. He and his family no longer live from that job, but he keeps thousands of rolls of films, posters and equipment from that era. Juan recounts his experiences, shows the elements and secrets of his art and commemorates the cinema in a special performance for this documentary.

A social and cultural testimony of Paraguayan peasant life (in the indigenous language of Paraguay: the Guarani), its subsistence problems, the emigration of family members, their struggles for the recognition of their rights, their relationship with nature and their hopes. This testimony corresponds to the shared experience with the Ramos Gómez family, resident of Cordillerita Costa, Ybycuí, Department of Paraguarí, 120 kms. of the capital Asunción, on April 20, 2008, national election day.