Z365" or "Festival all year round" is the new strategic point of the Festival in which converge investigation, accompaniment and development of new talents (Ikusmira Berriak, Nest); training and cinematic knowledge transfer (Elías Querejeta Zine Eskola, Zinemaldia + Plus, Filmmakers' dialogue); and investigation, disclosure and cinematic thought (Z70 project, Thought and Discussion and Research and publications).
September 1973. Uruguay is under the control of military dictatorship. The Tupamaros guerrilla movement has been crushed and out of action for a year. Its members imprisoned and tortured. One autumn night, three Tupamaros prisoners are taken from their prison cells in a secret military operation that will last for twelve years. From then on they will be hauled around different camps all over the country, subject to a macabre experiment; a new kind of torture aiming to break the limits of their mental resistance. The military order is clear: “since we couldn’t kill them, we’re going to drive them insane”. For more than a decade, the prisoners will be kept in isolation in tiny cells where they spend most of their time with hoods on, tied up, deprived of their basic needs, with hardly any food, and seeing how their senses are reduced to a minimum. With their bodies and minds pushed beyond the limits, La noche de 12 años (A Twelve-year Night) tells us how they managed to survive.