The Pinochet Case

2002 • 109 minutes

About this movie

Augusto Pinochet, the general who overthrew President Salvador Allende of Chile in 1973, was the first dictator in Latin America - or the world - to be humbled by the international justice system since the Nuremberg trials. In September 1998, Pinochet flew to London on a pleasure trip. He rested for a few days. He had tea with Margaret Thatcher. But, suddenly, he began experiencing back pain and underwent an operation in the London Clinic. Upon waking from surgery, he was arrested by the London police. Who was responsible for this? This new film by Patricio Guzmán investigates the legal origins of the case in Spain - where it began two years before Pinochet's arrest. With the film's protagonists, among them the prosecutor Carlos Castressana who filed the charges, and Judge Baltasar Garzón, who upheld them and issued the arrest warrant, THE PINOCHET CASE explores how a small group of people in Madrid laid the groundwork for this incredible feat -- catching a dictator 25 years after his rise to power.