24/02/2025 - BERLINALE 2025: Relying on archive footage and a chronological approach, Juanjo Pereira explores Stroessner’s 35-year military dictatorship in Paraguay

Under the Flags, the Sun [+see also:
trailer
film profile] sees Paraguayan director Juanjo Pereira making his feature film debut, which he is presenting in the Panorama section of the 75th Berlinale. It’s a work mostly composed of archive footage shot by the regime for propaganda purposes, as well as by foreign TV channels and newsreels of that time. We’re specifically referring to the period running 1954 to 1989: the years spanning Alfredo Stroessner’s dictatorship and General Andrés Rodríguez’s subsequent coup d’état. The film explores this period chronologically, attempting to analyse - albeit superficially - how Stroessner and his Colorado Party came to power. It was a textbook method, consisting of threats, election fraud and power legitimised by scaremongering over Communism. All of which was endorsed by the US administration and its policy of control over Latin America, also known as the Monroe Doctrine.

Analysing a stretch of time covering almost 40 years in a little over an hour and a half is no easy task, and Juanjo Pereira does focus on several crucial moments in the so-called Stronato – the years when Stroessner was in power. He gives plenty of attention to the fight led by the opposition and by activists for human rights which were being breached by the regime. The footage comes courtesy of French TV networks, to be specific, and it was from Paris that the victims’ loved ones tried to shine a light on the Paraguayan government’s crimes. But it was also in France that President Pompidou welcomed Stroessner with full honours in 1973. The film further explores the story of Josef Mengele, the blood-thirsty Nazi doctor who was from Bavaria, just like Stroessner, who was given Paraguayan nationality and state protection and who Paraguay refused to extradite to Germany. It covers Operation Condor, the secret services campaign set up by the CIA to support the dirty warfare embarked upon by South American dictators. The film ends with footage of the coup d’état carried out by Andrés Rodríguez and the final TV appearances of Stroessner who was, by this point, exiled in Brazil, where he died without ever facing trial.

Under the Flags, the Sun is undoubtedly highly effective in relaying to the average viewer what exactly happened in Paraguay from the ‘50s onwards. What it lacks, however, is an explanation of how that dictatorship has impacted modern-day Paraguay, where the Colorado Party is still in power, as we’re informed by a timely caption at the end of the film. It goes without saying that confronting such a painful past is essential, and Paraguay seems a little behind other Latin countries when it comes to facing up to the ghosts of its past, no doubt owing to the length of Stroessner’s dictatorship. Let’s hope that Under the Flags, the Sun is only the beginning of this reflective process, and that the country continues to drill down into its past, perhaps under the aegis of a work which educates audiences but which is also brave enough to make connections with the present and to sidestep conventional approaches which tend to call the shots in modern-day documentary-making.

Under the Flags, the Sun was produced by Cine Mío (Paraguay), MaravillaCine (Argentina) and Sabaté Films (Paraguay) in co-production with Lardux Films (France), Bird Street Productions (USA) and weltfilm (Germany). Cinephil (Israel) is managing its world sales.

(Translated from Italian)