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Dietmar Post, Lucía Palacios
Franco on Trial: The Spanish Nuremberg?

Single DE 2018 on Play Loud! Productions label
Spoken Word (Political)

Franco on Trial: The Spanish Nuremberg? is the new documentary film by Dietmar Post and Lucía Palacios (both responsible for Monks: The Transatlantic Feedback). After the success of Franco´s Settlers, their first encounter with Franco’s dictatorship, they now tackle one of the most undisclosed chapters of European history: the allegedly organized extermination that took place in Spain under General Franco’s fascist dictatorship between 1936 and 1975 after he established his power with the help of Germany, Italy and Portugal. To this day no one has been prosecuted for the regime’s systematic atrocities; victims haven’t been rehabilitated. Over 100,000 people are still missing. In 2008, a Spanish judge failed in his attempt to indict Franco and his generals for crimes against humanity. Now for the first time, an Argentinian investigating judge, María Servini, has issued 24 international arrest warrants against high-ranking representatives of the Franco dictatorship. The filmmakers accompany her as she tries to initiate court proceedings against the accused, proving that a reappraisal of Spain’s darkest chapter is long overdue. The film debates concrete crime cases presented in the Argentinean Lawsuit. By interweaving never-before-seen archival material and by delivering an astounding historical contextualization of each case the film itself provides new evidence. In one of the key scenes the film creates a sense of the impending lawsuit's reality when one of the suspected perpetrators is confronted directly with the accusations by the plaintiff, the investigating judge and the plaintiff's lawyer. The film has been in the works for over 10 years. During that time the directors managed to get access to people from both sides, including the daughter of a general in the 1936 coup who still counts a silver-framed portrait and personal present of German Nazi-leader Hermann Goering among her possessions. Franco on Trial reveals a hidden part of 20th century European history and raises the question: Will the so-called “Argentinian Complaint” become a Spanish Nuremberg? The film is in Spanish language with subtitles in English and German.

Musicians

	Dietmar Post , album by
	Lucía Palacios , *1972 ES album by

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