During my trip in 2014 in the North of Chile, I met many Chilean families who told me about Pinochet's dictatorship, remembering those cruelties with pain. They took me to the Atacama desert, and I was enchanted by the unlimited and magical beauty of the desert, but I also thought of the “mujeres of the desert” (“wives of the desert”), the “desaparecidos” (“missing”) and their pain.
Many prison camps were in the Atacama desert, so many remains are found right there, there are 38,000 desaparecidos: students, workers, trade unionists, whole families, including children.
My intention was not to make a documentary, but to manifest the emotions of a mother who loses her son, on the indescribable void after a kidnapping. The indifference of many on war crimes grips the desert like a dense and impossible fog. Because those who do not see can forget and those who forget do not believe in what has happened. The fog devours the streets, the mountains of sand, the fog is oblivion. But the desert has no fault, mothers will continue to dig in hopes of finding some bones to bury. Maybe then they will find peace.
