Silenced Artists
From Cuba and Chile to Spain, Argentina, Brazil, and Mexico, these films explore what happens when artists confront the forces that seek to silence them. Musicians, filmmakers, writers, performers, and visual artists face censorship, political repression, exile, or historical erasure—but continue to create, resist, and reclaim their voices. Together, these stories reveal art as both a target of power and a powerful form of resistance.
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The Silenced Artists collection includes the following titles:
Carlos Saura Photographer
Documentary
Germany
Legendary Spanish filmmaker Carlos Saura unveils his hidden passion: Photography.
Dreams Adrift
Sueños al pairo
Documentary
Cuba
The story of Mike Porcel, a visionary Cuban musician silenced and exiled as dissident — his voice rediscovered through this powerful documentary.
El Eternauta´s Wife
La mujer de El Eternauta
Documentary
Argentina, Spain
Elsa Sánchez's life is evidence of the cruelty of Argentina’s repressive dictatorship, which took the lives of her husband and family.
Equipo Crónica. Art in the Trenches
Equipo Crónica. Arte de trinchera
Documentary
Spain
Artist Manolo Valdés recalls Equipo Crónica, whose Pop Art challenged Franco’s Spain with bold, collective political resistance.
Everybody Leaves
Todos se van
Drama, Fiction, Romance
Colombia, Cuba
A celebration of freedom and a confrontation of the authoritarian Cuban regime of the 1980s, which led to one of the country’s worst economic crises. The film is based on the award-winning novel by Cuban writer Wendy Guerra.
Exiles
Exilios
Documentary
Spain, Mexico
Exiles reveals the lives of three artists who fled the Spanish Civil War to reinvent themselves in Mexico, making an impact on art and culture.
Gabo & Cinema
Gabo y el cine
Documentary
Mexico
A commendable and well documented contribution to the general study of Nobel Prize winner Gabriel García Márquez’s cultural production. In the voice of his friends and accomplices, the documentary takes us beyond his literary figure and immerses us in his cinematic one.
It Runs in the Family
Lo que se hereda
Documentary
Dominican Republic, United States
Victoria Linares uncovers her link to forgotten Caribbean queer filmmaker Oscar Torres, exploring memory, erasure, and identity through reenactment.
Marina Abramovic in Brazil: The Space in Between
Documentary
Brazil
Marina Abramović travels through Brazil in search of personal healing and artistic inspiration, experiencing sacred rituals and revealing her creative process.
Stories Our Cinema Did (Not) Tell
Histórias que nosso cinema (nāo) contava
Documentary
Brazil
A review of the military dictatorship in Brazil told through images and sounds from pornochanchada films, a genre of erotic films popular during that period.
Tania Libre
Tania libre
Documentary
Cuba, United States, Germany
In a fascinating and novel approach, Lynn Hershman Leeson allows us to eavesdrop on one of the world’s most celebrated—and daring—Cuban artists, Tania Bruguera’s session with Dr. Frank Ochberg, a New York-based psychiatrist and pioneer in post-traumatic stress disorder and the Stockholm syndrome.
The Padilla Affair
El Caso Padilla
Documentary
Spain, Cuba
La Habana, 1971: poet Heberto Padilla has just been released from prison and “self-confides” as a counter-revolutionary before the writer’s guild, marking a before and after in the Cuban regime.
The Revolution of the Muses
La revolución de las musas
Documentary
Spain
Situated between fiction and documentary, The Revolution of the Muses reclaims the women silenced by the history of Western art.
Vicente Ruiz: In Real Time
Vicente Ruiz: A tiempo real
Documentary
Chile
An exploration of the social role of art through one of the leading figures of the Chilean counterculture of the 1980s: Vicente Ruiz.