Not Reconciled

Throughout Spain there are many unmarked mass graves holding victims of executions during the civil war and the Franco regime. In ‘Not Reconciled’ the voices of the ghosts of Rosa and Carlos, young Spanish civil war republicans roam the ruins of the small town of Belchite in Aragon, Northern Spain waiting for the discovery of their unmarked graves. Belchite was fought over, bombed and shelled in the Spanish civil war and memorialised by Franco as a monument to his victory. Republican prisoners were forced to build a new town, leaving the old town open to the elements, gradually crumbling to dust. It was only in 1964, 16 years after the end of the war that the last inhabitant was able to move to the new town. As tourists walk over the graves of the dead looking for ghosts, most Belchite residents are reluctant to talk about the war in the uneasy agreement of forgetting which has continued since the war.

In this moving and evocative film the sounds of wind and the echoes of voices, and slow motion through the ruins combine with the fictionalised voices from the past; long shots of the ruins, the slow silent walks of tourists and the seeming oblivion of the present day town next door to those who lost their lives are overlaid with voices from the present; the everyday life of the inhabitants in the new town and conversations with the old people in the town, are intertwined with images of the ruins.