Karadima Forest

The film is based on real events. Fernando Karadima, a priest who led a powerful congregation in Chile for years, abused a number of the young men around him. The telling follows the hierarchy inside the church and one young man's decision, years later, to speak. What he meets first when he speaks is denial. Matías Lira's film carries the recorded outcome behind it as well: in 2011 the Vatican found Karadima guilty of abusing minors, and in 2018 the Pope removed him from the priesthood. In Chile the case had run past the statute of limitations. The film does not show the abuse; what it describes is the machinery of silencing. Luis Gnecco plays Karadima.