How Oppression Strikes (1983)

Overview

Peter Nestler, an important German filmmaker with an extensive filmography, agrees with Chilean filmmaker Rodrigo Gonçalves, exiled in Sweden, to make a documentary on PIDEE (Protection of Children Harmed by the State of Emergency) and on FASIC, a Catholic organisation for the defence of human rights. It is one of the first clandestine films to be made during the period of the dictatorship, and provides an insight into the state of repression in which the population was living. The filmmakers entered the country in 1982 and clandestinely shot several films in the country. Among the testimonies is an interview with the widow of Hugo Araya, "El Salvaje", filmmaker and photographer assassinated on 11 September 1973. The film's credits list "Sergio Bustamante" as co-director, a fictitious name invented by Gonçalves because he was still in exile. "How oppression strikes " won the FIPRECI prize at the Oberhausen Festival, Germany, in 1983.