La Quemadura

JORIS IVENS AWARD

This is a matter of books from a closed-down publishing house, photos that are now faded, a grandmother’s silences and the void of an unexplained disappearance that still haunts memories. The books: from Quimantú publishers and banned during Pinochet’s dictatorship. The photos: photos of a motherless childhood. The silences: those of a grandmother who, in order to bring her grandchildren up in an untroubled world, thought it wise to deal with her daughter’s sudden disappearance by banishing all mention of her. What cannot be explained is silenced. With what their mother left behind (a collection of Quimantú paperbacks), René Ballesteros and his sister attempt to explain her disappearance and their own abandonment. (Yann Lardeau)