In 1977, Valentin Milanow, a Bulgarian student at the GDR Academy of Film and Television, sat in at the DEFA Studio for Documentary Films. Director Rainer Ackermann was assigned as his mentor. Milanow came up with the idea of portraying the reality of life of exiled Chileans in the GDR. He was friends with a young couple, Alejandra Holzapfel and José Fuica, who lived in the same prefabricated housing estate in Potsdam-Babelsberg. She studied veterinary medicine, he was training to be a teacher of Marxism-Leninism. Milanow was allowed to film their wedding. On the fringes of the seemingly happy celebration, conversations turn to memories of interrogations and torture by the military junta and worries about relatives who were left behind. What the bride herself did not reveal at the time: As a leftist underground fighter she had been exposed to the worst abuse in the “Venda Sexy” prisoners’ camp and others. Today, this place is the memorial site Asociación de Memoria y Derechos Humanos Irán 3030. It is run by Alejandra Holzapfel.

Florian Wüst