Dealing, like many of Marcelo Martinessi’s previous films, with the recent history of Paraguay, The Lost Voice is based on original interviews about the 2012 Curuguaty massacre which triggered political chaos and the removal of the acting president. The hand-held camera follows an old woman with a heavily creased face of awe-inspiring beauty through her daily chores. She is the mother of one of the victims. During her spoken recollections, the screen turns black as if showing respect, and the radio broadcast from the time of the massacre, a constant background sound throughout the film, cuts out. Shifting between speech and image and almost never allowing them to sync, the film evades the conventional interview format and functions much as memory itself, fragmentary and abounding in blind spots. The massacre itself is openly suggested only in one shaky shot of the frantic movements of panic-stricken chickens with gunshot sounds from the radio in the background. The rest is about the frightening calm after an - emotional and political - storm. (Ioana Florescu, BIEFF 2017)
