The Conspiracy. Rise and Fall of Salvador Allende

Credits

Length: 58 min, 43 min.
Format: DigiBeta
Language: German, English (subtitles)
Directed by: Michael Trabitzsch
TV co-producer: ARTE, BR, SR, SWR, SFB, HR, NDR, WDR
Year: 2003
Film subsidy: Nordmedia, Medienboard Berlin Brandenburg, FFA
Distributors: Telepool, MEDIA PLUS


The last days before the putsch. The people’s government, Unidad Popular, finds itself in great difficulty: the economic situation is catastrophic, the domestic situation is tense and at breaking point. Attacks by the right, militant demonstrations by the left in response, the country appears to be headed straight for a putsch.
Salvador Allende knows that a coup is planned. He has known it for weeks. He has tried, in negotiations with the Democracia Christiana, to convince its moderate wing to join a “grand coalition”. He is prepared, against the will of his own UP party leadership, to rescind many political measures, to capitulate with dignity, and, as president, to retain some of his social reforms. There is no other way out.

But negotiations with the DC breakdown; they want an unconditional surrender or... a coup. Allende has one last trump card, he thinks: with a last-minute plebiscite, a loyalty vote, that would confirm him as the legitimate president of Chile, he could force his party friends to support his solution and win over the DC. This would then have divided the military forces, lined up against his government that was still clearly supported by the majority.
This documentary is like a compressed diary of a short epoch. It is told in the dramatic style of a thriller.





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