El mocito

Jorgelino Vergara was 14 years old when he left the provinces to come to the capital, Santiago. The search for a new home and a surrogate family brought him to a villa where the henchmen of the Pinochet regime interrogated, tortured and murdered their political enemies. Here Jorgelino became the “houseboy”, a little errand boy who made coffee for the torturers. Today this man, who lives completely alone in a run-down hut, looks back on his wasted life. He was too close to the perpetrators to be rehabilitated as a victim of the regime. But at the same time he was too young and also too uninvolved to be counted from today’s perspective among the murderers, most of whom were able to escape into hiding unrecognized in 1990 and are still being looked for today by those left behind. 　　El mocito accompanies Jorgelino in a phase of his life in which he sets out to come to terms with himself and his past. The journey leads him to places and people who were once important for him, or still are. His personal story and the huge national tragedy of Chile begin to increasingly reflect each other – the film seeks out the analogies with great sensitivity, and finds them more in pictures than in words. –Berlinale