Created Silence

Breaking decades of imposed silence around Chile’s abused childhoods

For more than half a century, Chile has carried a legacy that many preferred to ignore: the systematic violation of children’s rights under state protection. Created Silence documents and confronts this history, revealing how silence was not accidental, but deliberately constructed and sustained over decades.

Structured across three chapters, the documentary examines irregular adoptions, child care institutions, and foster care systems that operated under the appearance of protection. Behind this facade, survivors recount experiences of abuse, neglect, physical and psychological violence, and serious violations that point to a sustained pattern of institutional complicity. These practices, repeated over generations, transformed childhood into a space marked by dispossession and suffering.

At the centre of the film are the voices of those who lived through these systems. Men and women who were separated from their families, forced into illegal adoptions, or raised within state supervised environments speak out to reclaim their histories. Their testimonies function both as personal acts of resistance and as collective denunciations of a system that failed to protect and instead perpetuated harm.

By restoring the right to speak to those who were silenced, Created Silence transforms individual memories into collective truth. The film exposes closed files, hidden crimes, and lives shaped by impunity, while demanding recognition, justice, and reparation. It stands as a documentary film that challenges Chile to confront its recent history and to break, at last, a pact of silence that has endured for more than sixty years.