Stalag Guatemala

Directed by Mikael Wahlforss

Stalag is an abbreviated term from the German “Stammlager”, which referred to a field of military prisoners of war during World War II. In Guatemala, almost forty years later, the term Stalag acquires a new dimension. The model villages were spaces in the Guatemalan rural areas where they forced thousands of civilians, previously terrorized by government brutality led by Ríos Montt. Likewise, the Civil Self-Defense Patrols (PAC), a paramilitary apparatus still in force in Guatemala, marked the last detachment in the damaged social fabric of Guatemala. As in Headline Today: Guatemala and in Armored Daydreams, Mikael Wahlforss presents us in Stalag Guatemala the testimonies of victims and perpetrators without makeup and without distortion of the facts. The anecdotes of one and the other flow across the screen transporting the viewer to that Guatemala in which men, women and children are indifferently victims and witnesses of state repression.