Where the Silence Is Heard is the evocative title of a feature documentary by directors Gabriela Pena and Picho García. And silence can be very painful and be a sign of trauma, as audiences will find out.
“Returning to a house in Chile abandoned in exile, a granddaughter traces three generations of memory to understand how love, fear, and silence are inherited,” reads a logline for the documentary, which world premieres on Tuesday, March 17 in the Next:Wave program of the 23rd edition of theCopenhagen International Documentary Film Festival,or CPH:DOX. That granddaughter is Pena. “Between her grandparents’ tenderness and her Barcelona-based mother’s emotional distance, she begins to question how love can endure when shaped by fear, absence, and silence.”
Where the Silence Is Heard follows her journey of renovating the house and piecing together her family’s history, which has been colored by the dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet, exile, and decades of silence.
Where the Silence is Heard is “an aesthetically beautiful story about inherited trauma,” highlights the CPH:DOX website. “An original cinematic exploration of memories, identity, and what love really consists of when it is shaped by fear and absence – driven by a single person’s burning desire to find peace before the next generation arrives.”
Pena and García, who are work and life partners, directed and edited the doc and produced it together with Gabriela Sandoval and Efthymia Zymvragaki. García also serves as sales contact on the project.
Ahead of celebrating the world in Copenhagen, Pena and García talked to THR about the arduous and emotional journey behind Where the Silence is Heard, their different experiences of a shared past, and the burden of intergenerational trauma.
The idea for the film actually developed over time. “When I was 18 or 19 years old, I traveled from Barcelona [where we were living since my mother had to go into exile] to Chile, and I discovered this notebook written by my grandfather and took it to Spain,” Pena tells THR. “It was handwritten, so I put it into the computer and made a book just for family and friends. It was my grandfather’s story, but it was also a very masculine narrative, very separated from the emotions and fears. And it had an epic structure, which is very common in the male narrative.”
‘Where the Silence Is Heard,’ courtesy of Gabriela Pena and Picho García
But there was more. “It also included some parts written by my grandmother, and those touched me very much, because those talked about his absence and the kids and the waiting,” recalls Pena.
A few years later, when she finished university, she traveled to Chile again in her early 20s and lived with her grandparents. “And little by little, everything you see in the film is what happened,” she tells THR. “I started to record it. I met Picho, and he helped me with the reconstruction of the old house and with the filming.”
Pena didn’t immediately realize what the doc was really about. “It was a slow discovery,” she tells THR. “One of the epiphanies of making the film was that it was about my relationship with my mother. And when I was pregnant with our kid, we understood that this old house was basically about me trying to go back to my mother’s uterus, trying to find this connection that was lost because she was in so much unresolved internal pain.”
Having García by her side, both as a collaborator on the doc and also a partner in life, provided much support to, allowing him to protect or encourage Pena as needed. “We met as filmmakers, and I fell in love with her,” García tells THR. “We started making a short film that I directed, called Familia, and that Gabriela produced. And we worked together on this film. On the short film, we worked for four years, and on this movie, it was six. We know that we want to be a creative duo, and we have now helped each other and got so involved in dealing with our [respective] families and family issues.”
In the case of Where the Silence Is Heard, for example, “Gabriela had to confront inherited wounds,” caused by family pain from exile, dictatorship, and silence, notes García. “We understand each other and can [support the other] with love and patience.”
‘Where the Silence Is Heard,’ courtesy of Gabriela Pena and Picho García
Adds Pena: “We trust so much in each other that if he says to me, you have to go deeper into your relationship with your mother, I trust him. And I know that he will hold my hand while we do so.”
Throughout their joint work on the two films, “we became adults,” says García. “It’s been a lot of putting [things] on the table, experiencing a lot of vulnerability, and we have been able to help each other a lot to feel comfortable doing so.”
To Where the Silence is Heard Picho also brought a different experience of their shared Chilean history, as his family remained in the country during and after the dictatorship.
The creative and life partners say they also bring different takes and personalities to the film process. “We don’t romanticize that we are so different, and that’s so helpful,” offers García. “Gabriela is deeper, and I’m a bit crazy,” he quips. Pena phrases it in a more diplomatic way: “I am the more ethereal, poetic and abstract, and Picho has the strong ideas and [the eye for the] concrete, practical stuff.”
How was facing trauma that has affected multiple generations? “This generational trauma is something that I have been wanting to confront since I can remember,” Pena tells THR. “And now that I am a mother, and that I am raising the fourth generation with Picho, I am very, very concerned and interested in [addressing] this trauma.”
How has her way of seeing her mother changed now that Where the Silence is Heard is about to premiere? “The relationship with my mother will never be perfect,” she shares. “She is who she is, but I am a bit more at peace and better understand her now. I know that her emotional distance, her unavailability is because she is trapped in what happened in her childhood, [including having to leave Chile from one day to another and leaving her boyfriend behind]. I have realized that it wasn’t me who was insufficient, as I thought before. It is just that these emotional tools are broken.”
‘Where the Silence Is Heard,’ courtesy of Gabriela Pena and Picho García
The doc references politics and history where needed but focuses on the family as much as possible, and that is by design. “We always felt with this project, that we didn’t want to start to politicize intimacy,” García tells THR. “What happened in these four walls was vulnerable. And the things happening inside the house were more important.”
But Pena recalls finding the balance was a challenge. “Sometimes, in previous cuts, we felt that we were not political enough or that we lacked positioning,” she shares. “I hope that it’s a political film, but not explicitly.”
The co-directors recently moved to Barcelona and are in a phase of restructuring their lives. So, instead of diving into a big new film project, they have a different priority right now. “That project is our son right now,” García says with a smile. “Our creative energy is really on him. It’s something that is sometimes invisible in this society, but for us, it’s enough.” Concludes Pena: “It’s something very beautiful for us.”
Her mother will finally see Where the Silence Is Heard in Copenhagen, where the couple has also organized a meet-up with a group of Chilean exiles. “I think it will be great,” Pena says. “I think she will cry a lot, which is good. And she will feel seen – by me and by other people.”