A man is picked up by a carload of security agents in the streets of an unnamed Latin American city and taken to a private detention center. Blindfolded and handcuffed he is photographed and interrogated for hours by teams of policemen. A ruthless and violent Army colonel is in charge of this operation which, essentially, confronts the will and the discipline of the “disappeared” prisoner and the efforts of his captors to break him down and extract specific information. In the process, the film unfolds a dramatic and powerful account of a classic confrontation of two men, their outlook on life and the world that surrounds them, and the violence and brutality that, of late, have been put to use by police and paramilitary organizations in some Latin American countries.

Born and raised in Santiago, Chile, Sergio Castilla worked in documentary cinema in Chile in the late sixties and early seventies. After the 1973 military coup, he went into exile in Sweden, where he developed The Disappeared, which was co-produced by the Swedish Film Institute and the Cuban Film Institute.