CHRONICLE OF A BOY ALONE, is an indictment of a fascist regime running roughshod over its most vulnerable citizens, its children. Focusing on the bleak life of eleven-year-old bad boy Polin, who's been abandoned by his family and sent to live in a state-run orphanage, it's also a moving portrait of the human spirit imprisoned by the chains of well-intentioned fools. Inside the harsh confines of the supposedly beneficial institution, Polin and his fellow inmates must deal with constant physical and psychological abuse by the staff, as well as the natural emotional tensions brought on by their own burgeoning adolescence. But through it all, they manage to keep their hopes alive with optimistic talk of freedom and bold plans of escape. One day, when the opportunity finally arises, and Polin learns that freedom, too, has its price.

Mario and Ana, in voluntary exile from Buenos Aires, live in a remote Argentine valley with their 12-year-old son Ernesto. Mario runs a school and a wool cooperative; Ana, a doctor, heads a clinic with Nelda, a progressive nun. Into this idealistic family comes Hans, a jaded Spanish geological engineer -- surveying the land for the local patron, to see if it can be dammed for hydro-electric power, which would drive the peasants from the land into the cities.

In 1920, some workers of Patagonia, grouped in anarchist and socialist societies, decide to make a strike demanding better working conditions. The situation becomes unsustainable and the government sends the order is restored.

This films tells the true story of seven teenagers who agitated for reduced student bus fares under two different regimes in Argentina, with tragic results. At first succeeding under the government of Isabel Peron, their protests draw hostile attention from the military regime that overthrows Peron. The ensuing crackdown on student social activists is demonstrated when police break up a school dance wielding swords on horseback. Later, six students are kidnapped in the middle of the night, and the police deceitfully claim ignorance about their whereabouts. Pablo (Alejo Garcia Pintos), a seventh member of the group is later arrested and learns that they have been brutally tortured by authorities. He survives to tell their story, but the six are never found, numbering among the hundreds of students who were kidnapped and are still missing.

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