EYES OF BIRDS, THE

Director Gabriel Auer and Carlos Andreu, co-writers of the screenplay for THE EYES OF BIRDS, spent a year and half in a probing study of conditions in the “Libertad” political prison in Uruguay. Their queries about the International Red Cross and the repressive elements of Uruguayan politics inspired the script for THE EYES OF BIRDS, a fiction based on truth that is so realistically portrayed that the film seems like a documentary. It reportedly took six years of negotiations for the International Committee of the Red Cross to gain authorization to visit Uruguay's so-called “model” prison. In the film, a three-member delegation arrives from Geneva to privately interview the 1200 inmates individually. They find themselves in a sterile, hygienic atmosphere where prisoners appear damaged more by psychological than physical means. During a two-month interrogation, the delegates meet with individual inmates in special cells and learn that all were tortured before imprisonment, causing many to suffer hallucinations. Discovering that the interviews have been bugged by prison authorities, the head of the delegation chooses political expediency over human rights. The Red Cross leaves and trucks carry prisoners away by night for the unseen reprisals that are all the more frightful for being left to the imagination. “Chilling. . .haunting. . .crisply edited. . .Gabriel Auer finds the exact cinematic form – a burnished clarity – to tell the story.” – Variety -USA Premiere-