Colonia Dignidad was a religious cult in a secluded village in the south of Chile, where Pinochet's secret police held and tortured hundreds of prisoners after the military coup that brought him to power in the 1970s. Those true facts are the setting for Colonia, an excellent film in which Emma Watson (Lena) and Daniel Brühl (Daniel) play a couple who suddenly become separated when Daniel is arrested for helping the Allende supporters. He is taken to Colonia Dignidad and tortured to try to get names of collaborators out of him. She finds out where he has gone, and offers herself to the cult as a willing member, to try to find him. Both the torture that Daniel endures and the hard life the Lena is subjected to are brutal and merciless, with the lusciously evil Paul Schäfer (played convincingly by Michael Nyqvist) overseeing both regimes. Their efforts to survive their situations, and to find a way out together are moving and exciting, and the crowd cheered at all the right moments when things started to go badly for the bad guys. This is one of the best films I've seen at the festival.
TIFF Overview
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