Dead Tongue

The barking and growling is constant, occasionally drowned out by fearful whining or irritated yapping. With whistles, a man leads a pack of dogs along a rough shoreline, across fields, and into the forest. His face remains out of view, his world submerged in grainy black-and-white. On the soundtrack, in half-sentences and with hesitant pauses, he begins a story he has never told before.

In 1980, the man worked for Íngrid Olderöck, the most powerful woman in Chile’s secret service during the military dictatorship. As the child of fugitive Nazis, she was raised on violence. In her work, she specialized in torture, for which she used specially trained dogs. She was responsible for some of the 1,469 disappearances that took place under the regime.

Olderöck died in 2001 and never had to answer for her crimes in court. However, the memory of “the woman of the dogs” is still very much alive, and resonates in the narrator’s voice.