The Producers

Pepe Rovano – Director

His documentaries include L’eco della
Bici (Italy, 2006 Audience Award at Documentary in Europe - Torino 2006), Tres pasos para el Retorno (Granada 2009), Tawantinsuyo (Perú 2006) and Ada (Italy 2012). In 2014, he was awarded the Audiovisual Grant for Script Development from Chile’s National Council of Arts and Culture for his transmedia project Black Demon Team. He produced and directed the documentary series entitled Sin Fronteras, which was broadcast on La Red channel in 2017 and 2018. In 2017 he produced the interactive project Black Demon Team (Docugame). In 2018 he was awarded the grant for Artistic Development for Memory and Human Rights for his interactive documentary project entitled Memorial Rocas. In an “augmented reality” version, the documentary was presented at several film festivals and art galleries throughout Europe and Chile. Pepe Rovano is currently a researcher PhD in Interdisciplinary Studies on Thought, Culture and Society at the University of Valparaíso and in the Huinay Scientific Center (PUCV) in Chile.

Kami Veliz – Producer

Filmmaker with a specialty in film direction and executive production from the University of Valparaíso (Chile), with postgraduate studies in creation and development of premium series and feature films rom EICTV (Cuba). She is an academic at the University of La Serena (Chile). She has developed most of her career as Executive Producer in various TV series and author and interactive idoc.

Making The Film

A Bastard and Pinochet’s Legacy is the story of Pepe, a young gay Chilean of 30, living in Italy, who returns to his home country and discovers that his biological father - a man whom he had never met - is none other than Colonel Rodrigo Retamal, the ex-chief of Chilean police intelligence. Retamal, we find out, has been condemned for human rights abuses, including the killing of six Communist activists in 1973, during the first days of the Pinochet’s coup d’etat. He was punished with one night in jail. After a moment of deep confusion, Pepe takes the astounding decision to meet his biological father and confront him. Taken by surprise, Colonel Retamal is extremely proud of his newfound son and opens his arms to Pepe, introducing him to his family and military entourage. Driven by his desperate need of connecting, Pepe tries to penetrate his father’s dark soul searching for a trickle of innocence or at least some sort of regret. With great difficulty, he succeeds in establishing a relationship but all crumbles when he reveals his homosexuality and is rejected once again.

At the same time, Pepe meets the relatives of his father’s victims. He bonds with the wife of one of them, an activist still searching for justice for the murdering of her husband. With her daughter, a theatre director, Pepe starts an artistic collaboration that will bring to the production of a theatre play on the murders perpetrated by Pepe’s father.

The social unrest Chile is going through slowly but firmly emerges in the film, taking always more attention until the explosion of the urban revolts that see the young Chileans fighting against the institutions in the streets of Santiago de Chile. Pepe is one of the activists. It is the year 2019, the one that will bring the biggest political change since Pinochet's dictatorship: the writing of the country’s new constitution. The only political lever that will allow the Chilean society to overcome the system of impunity supported through all these years by the country’s corrupt economical establishment. A change confirmed by the December 2021 elections.

– Pepe Rovano, Director