Bilingual Newsletter
Luis Mandoki and Oscar Torres Talk About "Innocent Voices"
Luis Mandoki: director, Carlos Padilla: actor, and Oscar Torres: screenwriter, all pictured below.
In
this interview Luis Mandoki, director, and Oscar Torres, writer, talk about
"Innocent
Voices," a film that tells the true story of an 11 year-old boy who
is caught in the middle of the civil war in El Salvador in the 1980s.
1. Considering this great power that films have of inspiring people,
what do you expect people to take with them after watching the film?
Luis Mandoki: What I have seen is that people always come with the same
question: What can I do? And I think that is great, because in fact that
is exactly what we are here for, but sometimes we forget.
2. How was the movie received by the people and the government
in El Salvador?
Oscar Torres: They said it was very realistic and also cathartic, because
what happened at the end of the war was that everyone stopped talking about
it. That is what occurs to the victims of abuse, because in a way the war
is an abuse that traumatizes people, makes them feel ashamed of what they
have experienced and makes them think that only they had experienced it.
Like Oscar, who has realized that it is not only his story, buy the story
of many that didn’t have the possibility to tell it.
3. Why do you think it is important to document this kind of problems
through a film?
Oscar Torres: Because, even if you know the figures and the situation, with
a film that whole reality becomes alive. That is the power of a film, especially
in the United States, where we don’t hear the news and don’t
shake up for anything except when it happens to us. So, when you watch this
film, you do not see Chava as Salvadorian child; you see him as I do, as
one’s child, and think “that could be happening to my child”,
and children think “that could be happening to me”, and then
they begin to value their lives.
4. Given the desperation to not be taken away by the army, in what
ways were children able to escape and be with their families?
Luis Mandoki: One way would be to knock on homes, we would stay at somebody
else’s house or we’d simply find ways to hide, like staying
near the river all day long. We would hide in the rooftops, for example.
Those things were hot, and we would burn our backs a lot because of it.
But that’s what we had to do. And in the middle of all that you find
ways to make innocence revive, like the magic of staying there until nightfall
and counting stars.
5. Do you believe that there is still hope for children, given
the situation of war?
Luis Mandoki: Well, I think that we wouldn’t be doing this and we
wouldn’t be here if we didn’t think that there was hope. Not
that we haven’t questioned ourselves on that. We have. I have. But
we wouldn’t have even started telling this story if we didn’t
think that there was hope.
6. Do you have anything to say to the people who want to get involved?
Luis Mandoki: I think Amnesty International is doing a great job in the
whole world. And the world needs people who wish to help, because by helping
others you also help yourself.