An innovative record of the dark past of a political system called the new state.
What can a photograph of a face reveal about a political system? What can an image taken for more than 35 years say about our present? These are the questions that Susana de Sousa Dias tries to respond with a remarkable documentary. The idea is original, I would even say innovative because she show a period of Portuguese history, the dictatorship, through photographs of the faces of political prisoners, victims of an oppressive political system that lasted 41 years. It is a register, because it addresses a very contemporary issue, unfortunately, through the testimonies, in voice off, of some of the prisoners of the regime and also focuses on the visible marks on the photographs of that time that should never be repeated again in any country on the world. There is something deeply disturbing in those silent images that cry out anyway. In the eyes of those people we see suffering. We sympathize with the testimony of these simple persons, which suffered the vilest of tortures for the sake of a political conviction, for the sake of bread at the table, for freedom. The filmmaker far beyond answering the questions that arose from the beginning of this movie, has raise even more questions when we are confronted with the reality of those faces. Is it worth it? As Fernando Pessoa said once, all is worth when the soul is not small! Touché!
