Following the success of "Franco’s Settlers", their first confrontation with Franco’s dictatorship, filmmakers Dietmar Post and Lucía Palacios turn in "Franco on Trial" to one of the darkest chapters of European history: the systematic and allegedly organized extermination carried out in Spain under General Francisco Franco’s regime between 1936 and 1975. Having seized power with the support of Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, and Portugal, Franco presided over decades of repression whose crimes remain largely unpunished. To this day, no one has been prosecuted for the regime’s atrocities; victims have not been rehabilitated, and more than 100,000 people remain missing.
In 2010, a Spanish judge’s attempt to indict Franco and his generals for crimes against humanity was blocked. In response, survivors and relatives of victims filed a groundbreaking complaint in Buenos Aires, the so-called Querella Argentina. Argentine investigative judge María Servini subsequently issued 24 international arrest warrants against senior figures of the Franco dictatorship. The filmmakers closely accompanied Judge Servini in her efforts to initiate legal proceedings, documenting a historic attempt to hold the perpetrators accountable and demonstrating how overdue a reckoning with Spain’s darkest past remains.
"Franco on Trial" examines specific criminal cases presented in the Argentine lawsuit. By interweaving never-before-seen archival material with contemporary footage, and by rigorously contextualizing each case, the film itself contributes new evidence to the historical record. One of its most powerful moments captures the urgency of the proceedings as a suspected perpetrator is confronted directly with the accusations, by the plaintiff, the investigating judge, and the plaintiff’s lawyer.
Developed over more than eight years, the film grants rare access to voices on both sides of the conflict. Among them is the daughter of a general involved in the 1936 coup, who still keeps a silver-framed portrait and a personal gift from Nazi leader Hermann Göring, objects that chillingly testify to the enduring legacy of Franco’s alliances and ideology.