May 31, 2002
9:00 PM-Theater 3
40 Seats

110 Minutes
Year and Country of Production: Belgium, Chile, France, Spain 2001.
Director: Patricio Guzman

Augusto Pinochet, the general who overthrew President Salvador Allende of Chile in 1973, was the first dictator in Latin America - or the world - to be humbled by the international justice system since the Nuremberg trials.

In September 1998, Pinochet flew to London on a pleasure trip. He rested for a few days. He had tea with Margaret Thatcher. But, suddenly, he began experiencing back pain and underwent an operation in the London Clinic. Upon waking from surgery, he was arrested by the police. Who was responsible for this?

This new film by Patricio Guzmán investigates the legal origins of the case in Spain - where it began two years before Pinochet's arrest. With the film's protagonists, among them the prosecutor Carlos Castressana who filed the charges, and Judge Baltasar Garzón, who upheld them and issued the arrest warrant, THE PINOCHET CASE explores how a small group of people in Madrid laid the groundwork for such an incredible feat -- catching a dictator 25 years after his rise to power.

When Pinochet finally returned to Chile, he faced 200 accusations of crimes, this time in Chilean courts. Eventually the Chilean Supreme Court also stripped him of his immunity, and on January 29, 2001, Judge Juan Guzmán placed Augusto Pinochet under house arrest. The people were no longer afraid, and the Chilean justice system had made up for lost time.