Bolivia's 'Forgotten': Operation Condor Era Familiar History For Oscar Voters

Bolivia's 'Forgotten': Operation Condor Era Familiar History For Oscar Voters
By Anthony D'Alessandro
December 9, 2014



“I couldn’t make this film nine years ago,” exclaimed Carla Ortiz, the producer and star of Forgotten (Olvidados), Bolivia’s Oscar entry for foreign film at the Awardsline screening last night, “We had an extreme right government (for quite some time) and I would have been killed or kidnapped.”

Set during the 1970s, Forgotten tells the story of a group of middle-class, anti-dictatorship individuals who are kidnapped and tortured during Operation Condor in Bolivia, an era in the southern cone of South America when right wing dictatorships, in cahoots with the U.S. government, weeded out any Communist or Socialist groups. It’s a topic that has been dramatic fodder for a number of Oscar-winning and nominated foreign films from the continent, including 1985’s best foreign film from Argentina, The Official Story, and the country’s 2009 best foreign film winner The Secret in Their Eyes. Official Story centers around an upper-middle class family, who learn that their adopted child was kidnapped during The Dirty War, a period during Operation Condor when many subversives disappeared. The Secret in Their Eyes deals with a modern day couple, a retired judiciary employee and a judge, who worked together on an unsolved 1974 rape and murder case that occurred during The Dirty War.

Given Bolivia’s recent liberal-leaning tendencies, Ortiz finally had the inspiration and confidence to make Forgotten, which she also co-wrote with Elia Petridis and Mauricio D’Avis. The film was directed by Mexican filmmaker Carlos Bolado.

“Suddenly, we are seeing the light, we’re seeing democracy, not the perfect democracy, but now we’re feeling a sense of brotherhood,” Ortiz told Deadline’s Dominic Patten. In the film, Ortiz plays Lucia, a pregnant woman who is a member of a young radical group. While her character is tortured severely in the film, Ortiz said the reality was worse, and that oppressors of the time would unleash rats on pregnant women in a luscious way.

“There are debates going on right now (after the film’s release in Bolivia). In the film we show people being tortured with electrodes attached to their ears, but in real life, many say they were attached to men’s testicles,” Ortiz said.

More:
http://deadline.com/2014/12/forgotten-bolivia-oscar-entry-carla-ortiz-talks-about-operation-condor-1201317670/