With a former president in exile and a country still reeling from the major political unrest it experienced late last year, the people of Bolivia are facing an unpredictable general election this Sunday (October 18). Political instability, of course, is nothing new to the South American country.
Some of Bolivia’s troubled political history is examined in A Moment of Silence (Un minute de silencio), a documentary by filmmaker Ferdinando Vicentini Orgnani about the last 25 years of politics in Bolivia – from the 1995 campaign to elect Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada to the 2006 election of Evo Morales, the first indigenous president of Bolivia.
Although A Moment of Silence was completed in 2016, Morales and the Bolivian government blocked the film’s release.
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“I started this production in 2008 following the wrong prospective of an ideological enthusiasm for what seemed to be a radical change in the process of progress and social inclusion in Bolivia,” said Orgnani in a statement. “After six years of investigation, the results came out very far from what I expected: a lost opportunity, a very dangerous scenario.”
Hollywood got its hand on a portion of the story in 2015. Oscar winner Sandra Bullock starred in Our Brand Is Crisis, a fictional account of candidate Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada’s plan to hire an team of American political consultants to help him win the 2002 Bolivian presidential election.
A Moment of Silence is currently available on VOD platforms.