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POWER AND IMPOTENCE, A TRAGEDY IN 3 ACTS

PODER E IMPOTENCIA, UNA TRAGEDIA EN 3 ACTOS

By Anna RECALDE MIRANDA

AUSTRAL FILMS - as SALES All rights, World

Documentary - Post-Production 2013

Power and Impotence tells the story of common men accessing power to try and challenge the system from within. In a political thriller settled in stranger-than-fiction Paraguay, we follow their hopes and disappointments from a rare behind-the-scene point of view, until the tragic ending.

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Ventana Sur 2013
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    • Year of production
    • 2013
    • Genres
    • Documentary
    • Countries
    • PARAGUAY, FRANCE
    • Languages
    • SPANISH, GUARANI
    • Budget
    • 0.3 - 0.6 M$
    • Duration
    • 96 mn
    • Director(s)
    • Anna RECALDE MIRANDA
    • Writer(s)
    • Anna RECALDE MIRANDA
    • Producer(s)
    • Anna RECALDE MIRANDA, Patric JEAN (BLACKMOON PRODUCTION)
    • Synopsis
    • Power and Impotence is a modern Shakespearian tragedy about power. 
It is the story of three men with an ideal who access power and to try and challenge the system from within: a mock-democracy political system, successor of the longest dictatorship in Latin America. 
In a political thriller settled in stranger-than-fiction Paraguay, we follow their hopes and disappointments from a rare behind-the-scene point of view, until the tragic ending and their fall from power.
      Fernando Lugo, former Catholic Bishop and member of the Liberation Theology - a left-wing Christian movement - won the presidential elections in Paraguay in 2008. 
This unexpected victory put to an end one of the longest one-party systems in history: the regime of the Colorado party which had been in power for 61 years, 35 of which under the rule of the dictator Alfredo Stroessner. 
His victory was a miracle, the redemption of the oppressed masses that brought him to power, a dream for change seemingly come true. 
But politics is not for Saints, and the dream is turning into a nightmare. 
The new President is a total outsider to traditional politics in his country, an idealistic man who strongly believes in ethics and values that he is striving to apply to politics. 
But as Head of State he realizes that power is not between his hands and that reality is slowly killing off utopia. He may have won the elections, but the oligarchy remains, deeply rooted in the Kafkaesque mechanisms of a mock-democracy. An oligarchy that never loses an occasion to bully him. 
To make it easier President Lugo is diagnosed with cancer and still faces aggressive criticism on his government’s actions from biased media. Within this hostile environment the main characters of the film, Lugo and his advisors Sixto Pereira and Miguel Angel Lopez Perito struggle to hang on to their dream and achieve democratic change, with unexpected important success (free health care, social welfare, creation of a Public TV...). 
But as soon as President Lugo dares considering the land reform problem, a horrible massacre between landless farmers and police takes place. 
The whole system immediately accuses him and starts an impeachment procedure. 
President Lugo is ousted from power in less than 48 hours. 
Like in the good old days the episode bears all the signs of a parliamentary coup. Paraguay's dream of change is over. 
From an intimate point of view the film aims at illustrating the paradoxes of power and the perversions of mock-democracy through the improbable journey of a bishop turned president. 
It gives the unique experience of the fragility of power and the empirical nature of History: 
a unique period in the history is documented in an intimate, universal film, providing an insight on the nature of politics, on the reality of people's power in representative mock democratic systems.
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