CAJA DE RESISTENCIA

The Virgin of El Rocío advances as she is showered in petals and prayers, accompanied by the faithful and onlookers in a cloud of dust that rises from the ground. This popular scene is a standard Andalusian snapshot, but also of Rocío, the heartbreaking and fascinating documentary by Fernando Ruiz Vergara, who was judicially kidnapped and censored during the Spanish democracy’s infancy for his testimonials about the Francoist repression in Almonte. The Sevillian filmmaker, condemned for this work, which was mutilated for its release in Spain, went into exile in Portugal as an act of protest and lived there for the rest of his life, never filming again. Caja de Resistencia recovers sketches of films that the director left unmade before his death, constructing an Iberian documentary that unearths the silenced stories of the wounds inflicted by the dictatorships in Spain and Portugal.