The Silence of Others

The Silence of Others (El silencio de otros) is an American–Spanish documentary film written and directed by Almudena Carracedo and Robert Bahar, which tells the story of the silenced fight of the victims of the dictatorship of Francisco Franco.

Since its release, the film has received several accolades, including the Goya Award for Best Documentary, the Platino Award for Best Documentary and the News & Documentary Emmy Awards. It was one of the fifteen films shortlisted for the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature at the 91st Academy Awards.

Production
Filmed over six years, the documentary follows the survivors of Francisco Franco's dictatorship as they organize the groundbreaking “Argentine Lawsuit” (Querella Argentina) to investigate, identify, and sanction those responsible for committing crimes against humanity during that period. The film interviews human rights lawyers, torture victims, and the children and grandchildren of those who were executed and whose remains were never allowed to be buried properly by their families. The film also interviews mothers who had their newborn children taken away by the State under Franco-era eugenics programs.

The film was produced in association with El Deseo by Esther García Rodríguez, Agustín Almodóvar, and Pedro Almodóvar, and includes interviews with survivors and human rights activists, such as María Martín López, Ascención Mendieta, and Chato Galante, among others.

Pedro Almodóvar, who helped produce this documentary, returned to this theme in his subsequent feature film Parallel Mothers, which features a woman photographer (played by Penélope Cruz) and her successful campaign to exhume a mass grave in her village.

Release
The film premiered at the 68th Berlin International Film Festival in the Panorama Dokumente section. It was theatrically released in Spain on November 16, 2018. It also aired on La 2 on April 4, 2019, achieving almost a million spectators.

In the United States, the film was released as part of the American television series POV on PBS.

Reception
Receiving positive reviews from critics on Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of based on  reviews, with an average rating of. Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 73 out of 100 based on 17 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".

Stephen Dalton from The Hollywood Reporter wrote about the subject of the film that “is still a very necessary story, delivered with rigor and conviction". Ben Kenigsberg from The New York Times called the film "informative, if not always as specific as it might have been”.

Criticism
While mainly well-received in Spain and abroad, the film has attracted criticism from some Spanish journalists perceived inaccuracies. For example, they criticized the scene featuring the exhumation of a mass grave in the Guadalajara cemetery, intended to find the body of Timoteo Mendieta. The film did not mention the political roles of those murdered during the war and dictatorship. It also did not mention that Mendieta was a trade unionist, the fact that most of the murdered in Guadalajara were workers, and that 38% were unionists. Rather than being a "pursuit of justice", as the film suggests, this exhumation was actually performed under a court order for the “transfer of remains” at the request of one of his relatives. This fact was greatly criticized by other relatives and the Foro por la Memoria.

In the scene where the grave is opened, a technician tells Timoteo Mendieta’s daughter, “this is your father”, identifying the body visually, rather than using DNA testing. This identification, movingly captured in the film, later turned out to be a mistake, as noted in the last lines of the film; the bones shown in that scene and identified by the ARMH technician were not those of Timoteo Mendieta. His bones were found in another mass grave a year later, and only then did his family actually get to bury him properly. This scene was criticized for generating unrealistic expectations for other relatives of the victims of Francoism, as they may wrongly believe that it's straightforward to locate relatives' bodies, when in fact successful identifications are rare.