Guapo'y
Fall Grants 2022 - Post-Production Stage
Sofia Paoli Thorne / Feature Documentary / Paraguay, Argentina, Qatar / 71 min / Original Language: Spanish / Interests: Documentary
Synopsis
Surrounded by sounds from a jungle-like garden, a woman inhabits the gloom of her bedroom, covering her body in roots. Her name is Celsa; she is 70 years old and lives immersed in her garden’s vegetation, seeking remedies that will soothe her pain, the oblivion, and her recent past. A past stained by the confinement and torture she endured 45 years ago during the military dictatorship in Paraguay. From the intimacy of her plants and treasured files, Celsa keeps a wish alive—to heal her memories and get stronger while living in a present where the dictatorship’s echoes reverberate and threaten to reinstate fear.
Celsa collects, grinds and soaks her seeds, sprouts and leaves. She evokes the pain again, palpating her muscles, feeling her skin. But in that atmosphere, loaded with steam and kitchen utensils, the sound of the rooms is suddenly interrupted by voices that fill the spaces of the house with news of the present. Speeches defending Stroessner’s dictatorship and State terrorism resound. Obscurity threatens healing, both Celsa’s and that of a people subjected to imposed oblivion. As night falls in the wooded garden, a breeze blows through, relieving and fusing itself with old tapes. On wet land, Celsa holds her body amid plants and roots, insisting on encountering herself and her own pain.
Credits
- Director
- Sofia Paoli Thorne
- Screenwriter
- Sofia Paoli Thorne
- Producer
- Sofia Paoli Thorne, Gabriela Cueto, Federico Pozzi
- Production Company
- Tekoha Audiovisual
About the Director
Sofia Paoli Thorne was born in Peru in 1982, and she had to move to Paraguay with her whole family in 1989 to escape the armed conflicts between the military and the rebel groups. There she became a director and a producer in IPAC with a postgraduate degree in business administration from Universidad Pacifico. She also became a mother, a teacher and founded Tekoha Audiovisual, where she directs pieces for television, documentary films and NGO videos. She directed the TV Show 'Tembi’u rape', which was awarded for its innovation at the TAL awards. She is the producer of 'The Devil’s Tuning', winner of Ibermedias DocTv Latinoamerica VI, and participated in IDFA. And also, the producer of 'Out of Field', directed by Hugo Gimenez, premiered in the international film festival of Guadalajara. 'Guapo’y', on the scars left by the military dictatorship, her first documentary film as a director, was selected to premiere in IDFA.