Days with Matilde

In September 1973, 19 paper mill workers were imprisoned and taken to the Laja police station. Six years later, their bodies were found in Yumbel’s cemetery. After almost 40 years, one of the policemen involved broke the pact of silence they had made the night of the killing, revealing the participation of the Paper Manufacturing Company (CMPC) in the murder. Today, the case is still open and awaiting sentence.

I remember the night when the history of my family changed. We received a phone call from Peru saying that my aunt Sibila was in prison accused of forming part of the Shining Path. I was seven years old and my parent's protective silence made me transform her image into a great mystery. She was kept in prison for 15 years. Today she is free and I want to get close to her, to listen and to understand.

The mourning for a father and the absences, intertwined with what remains. Letters, written by birds that used to visit the filmmaker when she was a child, now reveal secrets to her son, whom she watches grow up.