VIVA! – Buenos Aires 1977

Crónica de una fuga (2006) showing at Theatre Clwyd is not a film I would have automatically chosen to see on a rainy Wednesday evening. But Hazel wanted to see this nightmarish tale of a goalkeeper for a minor team abducted and held for months by the ruling junta of Argentina in the late seventies. The film is based on testimony from the trials of members of the junta and Claudio Tamburrini's autobiographical book . Even with the quality of the makeup effects, the sight of the cast emaciated, shaven-headed, heavily bruised, blindfolded, hand-cuffed and naked on frame beds in an empty house is all the more powerful because it is true and throughout it all, you just can't help despairing for humankind's infinite ability to be cruel.
The final half hour, where the four prisoners actually escape their captors is unbearably tense.............I felt quite wrung out by the end of it all