The meeting begins and classes and assembly rooms of schools and institutes begin to appear on the screen. Five, ten, 20 and up to 40 users connect simultaneously to what will be a massive discussion with teenagers about You are not alone: the fight against La Manadathe documentary that recounts the case of the 2016 Sanfermines to delve into the structural nature of sexual violence. Educational centers from Badajoz, Seville, Madrid, Alicante or Barcelona participate in the session attended by elDiario.es; There are more than 1,000 students willing to ask their questions. On the other side, Almudena Carracedo and Robet Bahar, its directors, answer them.
What would you say to women who are afraid to report? What is going to happen when ‘the pack’ gets out of jail? How can you help someone who suffers gender violence? How would you act if it were the other way around, if ‘the pack’ were women? Do you think that in seven or ten years this will change? “What do you think?” Almudena asks the boy who asked the question. He is embarrassed, laughs, but responds: “I think that as we are in these generations today maybe not…In 50 years I hope so.”
This is one of the colloquiums organized by Amnesty International on the occasion of 25N, the international day against gender violence, for which the students have previously seen the documentary in class, which became number one on Netflix, but there are many educational centers in which it is being projected. And not only: Carracedo and Bahar have also gone with the film to a congress of judges, to the Navarra School of Security and Emergencies with municipal police and firefighters or even to a prison.
“It’s being amazing, they are putting it in many places. And that connects with the purpose of the film, with the need to provide tools to work on the topic in an accessible way. It is eminently feminist, but it is not a hammer to the head. Little by little, as the puzzle of complex ideas unfolds, the dimension is understood: that it is not a case, it is a universality,” says Carracedo.
Is it justifiable?
This is something especially key in the case of adolescents, maintains Isabel Blanco, professor of Biology at IES María Telo (Los Corrales de Buelna, Cantabria). The teacher decided to show the film in the 3rd year ESO class of which she was a tutor because it seemed to her that “it had to be done” and that it was “very interesting material to work on this topic” although she acknowledges that “she went with a little fear” of possible reactions. Remember that when in 2018 the institute decided to change its name from IES Javier Orbe Cano to incorporate the name of the prominent feminist jurist “it caused a lot of revolution in the town and the nicest thing they called us was feminazis.”
With this background and in a moment of polarity in which a growing feminist consciousness coexists in the classrooms with a denial of sexist violence that continues to permeate, Blanco proposed several questions to open the debate. “They don’t remember this case, they were six or seven years old…, but the film has the ability to put things on the table very clearly, it is a little difficult to question because it is not ‘mud for my side’ ”. Although the documentary focuses on the Sanfermines case, it also incorporates that of Pozoblanco and the murder of Nagore Laffage to create a mosaic of sexual violence and trace the path to the emergence of ‘I do believe you’.
Furthermore, at the IES María Telo they talked about whether the fact that the young woman from the Sanfermines did not say ‘no’ or had a kiss before the sexual assault with one of them would justify the behavior of the perpetrators of the crime. The teacher is aware that “many girls were very clear that you can do whatever you want and when you say no it means no, they said no”, a speech that was not repeated in the same way by the boys although “they all agreed.” in that it was not justifiable.” Another of the most commented things was how the case served as a catalyst for #Cuéntalo promoted by Cristina Fallarás, something that “they understood very well and it hooks them because for them the normal thing is to tell things on networks.”
In fact, telling, talking, breaking the silence is one of the recipes that Carracedo usually points to when the topic arises in a conversation. How can you help girls who have suffered sexual assault? asked a young man from the IES Altos de los Molinos in Albacete. What would you say to women who are afraid to report? said a girl from the French Lyceum in Madrid. “We must keep in mind that it doesn’t just happen to a few of us, that this goes from the smallest to the most serious. It is important to surround yourself with people, your friends, your family, colleagues, teachers…When I was your age this was not counted, but this is a different time. Find a safe environment and whenever you want and where you want, think that you can tell it, although it is not necessary to do it immediately,” the director tells them.
From the documentary, there are many themes that unfold. There is a lot of curiosity on the part of adolescents about the judicial process, about the time that ‘the pack’ will be in jail or about the process of creating the film. The students of the IES Delgado Hernández de Huelva, for example, are interested in knowing whether the victims – whose words appear in the voices of the actresses Natalia de Molina and Carolina Yuste – “found it difficult to participate” and those of the IES Alfonso Moreno (Brunete , Madrid) if “pornography influences the perpetuation of sexual violence.” There Bahar responds: “All of us in this video call are of an age and we know that this content is fiction, it is not a real representation, just as when we watch a Western it does not occur to us to rob a bank.”
A “mirror” for the kids
It would be materially impossible for the directors of The silence of others They were present in all the screenings that have taken place in institutes since it premiered in March, but they have been in some. And in general they have found a “very positive” response: “On the one hand, girls identify with this violence and this is very important. When I was not their age I did not know how to name them, but now many make them visible. And, on the other hand, we try to make it work as a mirror for the kids. Not from blaming, but from co-responsibility: ‘you didn’t understand that this existed, but now that you know, what can you do?’”
Co-director Bahar delves into this issue and points to the importance that was given from the beginning to the appearance in the film, shot in secret for three years, of “exemplary men” who “fight against sexual violence” such as the mayor of Pamplona or the police officer who attended to the victim of ‘the pack’. And, furthermore, Bahar also talks about himself in conversations. “I tell you that it has also been a learning experience for me, that I understood things that I had not understood before, for example, that many women in my life like my sister, my mother or my friends had experienced things that I did not know.”
Fernando Sánchez Calvo, teacher at IES Narcís Monturiol in Parla (Madrid), went with his 4th year ESO students to the screening of you are not alone organized by INJUVE at the Cine Doré three weeks ago. He agrees that both girls and boys “received it very well and found it very interesting because they became very hooked,” but recognizes that “the big question is whether they know how to recognize this in everyday situations or in the face of minor events.” Even so, she believes that the impact “is positive” because “we adults don’t realize it, but these children were only seven years old when this happened, it was a distant story for them,” agrees with Isabel Blanco.
The teacher is concerned about the reactionary wave that questions feminism and the laws against sexist violence that have been rising in recent years and how this discourse impacts adolescents, but he believes that these types of initiatives help move in the opposite direction. “There is everything…sometimes the typical ‘not all men’ come out, that there are also women who kill men or many times you notice it with silence…but there is also progress and an awareness about machismo that facilitates these materials,” says the professor. “After watching this film it is impossible to deny this violence, it is impossible to look around you and not see it,” concludes Carracedo.
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