Harrowing testimonies from Celsa and her mother speak of the scorching heat, unimaginable torture and cruel neglect. These vivid stories are heartbreaking, yet Thorne also juxtaposes them with the calm rhythm of Celsa's daily life, where she carefully tends to her plants and gathers ingredients for herbal cures.
Thorne's film makes clear that the ghosts of the past can never fully disappear. On the radio, one can hear Mario Abdo Benitez, then president of Paraguay, expressing admiration for Stroessner's policies. The film's title also gestures to the danger of history being erased.
Under its branches, Celsa's comrades would make secret tapes where they documented the camp's violence and conditions. The film poignantly ends with one of those recordings, voices from the past that seek to rouse the present out of its historical amnesia.
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