During Pinochet's military dictatorship, Adriana Rivas, the Australia-based favourite aunt of the young filmmaker, was said to have worked for the infamous secret police DINA. In 2007, while visiting her family, she is arrested, but soon released again. She asserts her innocence, and claims that she was involved in neither interrogations nor in torture. Orozco is prone to believe her and starts researching – and ends up in hot water. Her documentary project, which was meant to collect evidence of Rivas's innocence (who is facing trial in Chile for abetting mass murder), transforms into the struggle of a post-born to find the truth, which takes on increasingly acrimonious and desperate qualities.
In conversations with Ariana via Skype – as well as with family members, former colleagues of Rivas and contemporary witnesses – Orozco collides with the all-pervasive repression and denial of Chile's past and its numerous victims. El Pacto de Adriana is a film made with little money and simple means; at the same time, it is a harrowing document that shows the high personal price one pays when striving for factual clarity and a reconciliation with the past.
