The Offended

At the age of 33, filmmaker Marcela Zamora heard that her father had been imprisoned and tortured for 33 days by the regime in El Salvador during the civil war in the 1980s. It was another two years before she gathered the courage to ask her father, now a retired politician and diplomat, about that period and the torture he underwent. In the film, she also interviews several other men who were tortured because they were seen as subversives, as well as a man who took part in the torture in a subordinate capacity. Often illustrated with shocking archive footage, their testimony provides insight into the scope of this horrific war, during which tens of thousands of people were murdered in shadowy circumstances. It also makes us aware of the cruelty people are evidently capable of. But above all, breaks the silence – not only of the generation that went through all of this in person, but also of the next generation, which is afraid of reopening the old wounds.