A mother and daughter walk through a sand dune by the sea. The seemingly idyllic picture is deceptive. Seven-year-old Cecilia knows that life is characterized by silence and lies, but her mother hides from her the real reason why they live in a barren beach hut and her father is not with them. It is 1979 in Argentina, when the military dictatorship brutally persecutes all dissenters. When the locally stationed army organizes a writing competition at school and Cecilia openly responds to the given topic, things become dangerous for mother and daughter...
Paula Markovitch consistently depicts the constant threat and the imperceptible horror that spreads throughout society under a reign of terror from the girl's point of view. Her haunting images are colored by her own childhood experiences, in which her father was imprisoned and tortured while she sat in the very classroom where she filmed the school scenes at the age of eight. Born in Buenos Aires in 1968, Paula Markovitch emigrated to Mexico in 1990 and studied film and literature. She lives there and works as a writer and screenwriter. She has written books for television and cinema (including Fernando Eimbcke's Temporada de patos, 2004, and LakeTahoe, 2008).
