The Chilean Building

At the end of the 1970s, many militant Chileans returned home from exile in Europe to help their comrades in the struggle against the Pinochet dictatorship. In her first full-length documentary, Macarena Aguiló relates a personal story played out against the backdrop of this history. She uses photographs, diaries and interviews to reconstruct an important period from her youth, when she lived in a commune in Cuba. Project Homes was set up by freedom fighters who could not take their children with them for reasons of personal safety. Together with 60 others, Aguiló was brought up by "social parents." Aguiló paints a picture of a tight community where ideals of freedom and solidarity initially prevailed. But a few years later, the news from Chile that the struggle was not having the desired result and that increasing numbers of arrests and murders were taking place there also caused a loss of morale in Cuba. A sense of tragedy filters through in the stories from their childhoods (despite all good intentions, they felt abandoned) and the sacrifices their parents made in the name of freedom.