Doc Talk Podcast with Under the Flags and the Sun and the remaining local filmmakers.
Two emerging directors are entering the Oscar race this year with their directorial debuts.
Paraguayan director Juanjo Pereira won the FIPRESCI Award at the Berlin Film Festival for his documentary Under the flags and the sun. It covers the period from 1954 to 1989, when his country was ruled by the military dictator General Alfredo Stroessner. The strongman, who enjoyed the support of successive US administrations as a reliable anti-communist, routinely disappeared left-wing political opponents, killing and torturing countless of them.
Paraguay chose the documentary as its official entry for the Best International Feature Film Oscar category. In today’s edition of Deadline’s Doc Talk podcast, Pereira tells us how Paraguay became the focus of the CIA-coordinated covert Operation Condor program that waged “dirty wars” in several Latin American countries during that Cold War era. Pereira also reveals how the notorious Nazi Dr. Josef Mengele found refuge in Paraguay and is believed to have become Stroessner’s personal physician.
We spoke with Pereira at the Camden International Film Festival in Maine, which has become a major destination for both emerging and established directors. While there, Doc Talk also interviewed Paige Bethmann, an Indigenous filmmaker who screened her documentary The rest is originalWhich also plans to qualify for the Oscars this year. Her film focuses on Coe Stevens, a 17-year-old Indigenous athlete who grew up on the Paiute Reservation in Nevada. Even though he didn’t get much support, he managed to become the best long-distance runner in his state — and was so talented that a scholarship to the University of Oregon seemed within reach.
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The film explores Stevens’ internal conflict over his hope of leaving the reservation to join Oregon’s elite racing program, which would mean everything for his future but would distance him from his roots. For him, “staying Native” involved honoring his great-grandfather, a survivor of the notorious Indian residential school system who made the 50-mile trek as a boy to escape school and return home.
That’s what happened in the latest episode of Doc Talk, hosted by Academy Award winner John Ridley (12 years of slavery, Shirley) and Matt Curry, senior documentary editor at Deadline. The show is produced by Deadline and Ridley’s Nō Studios.
Listen to the episode above or on major podcast platforms including Spotify, iHeart and Apple.