Hot Docs 2021: Our Review of ‘The Silence of the Mole’

Posted in Festival Coverage, Hot Docs 2021, Movies by - May 03, 2021
Hot Docs 2021: Our Review of ‘The Silence of the Mole’

General Fernando Romeo Lucas Garcia was the 37th President of Guatemala. Back in the 1970s, when the country still had some free speech left, left leaning citizen protested against his human rights violations. Evidence of these protests exist as news reels. And few of those reels still exist, while the government left most of them to rot. After all, the lack of historical record is beneficial for anti-communist regimes to suppress and kill their citizens.

But Garcia is not The Silence of the Mole‘s main subject. If anything, he’s a tertiary figure here despite of this atrocities. The documentary’s main subject then, is Elias Barahona, a mysterious figure in Guatemala because he departed from the left to join Garcia’s government. Of course, the real story is more complex. The film talks to Barahona’s leftist collaborators who understand that Barahona had to stay silent to spy on the government.

The film’s main story is interesting enough as it is, and the same goes for the side stories about film preservation and how Guatemala survives on film. When it doesn’t interview Barahona’s friends, it shows a lot of archives of either smuggled film or footage that survived because Americans shot them. Director Anais Taracena’s narration is cool too. This is one of the cases where her approach is understandable even though she can get artsy.

Nonetheless, these scenes make the film different from political documentaries that sometimes veer into thriller territory. Besides, her artistic depiction of decay is much better than the sensory overload in most political documentaries. The film eventually returns to the interview scenes which the film does best. One of Barahona’s collaborators remind viewers of all the people he saved. And those people are enough to build a Guatemala where free speech reigns as it should do.

  • Release Date: 4/29/2021
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While Paolo Kagaoan is not taking long walks in shrubbed areas, he occasionally watches movies and write about them. His credentials are as follows: he has a double major in English and Art History. This means that, for example, he will gush at the art direction in the Amityville house and will want to live there, which is a terrible idea because that house has ghosts. Follow him @paolokagaoan on Instagram but not while you're working.
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