Peter Torbiörnsson
Sweden
2011 | Numerique | 1:42:00

In 1984, a long, narrow boat skimmed over the San Juan River, the border between Nicaragua and Costa Rica. On board was a group of international journalists, on their way to a press conference with guerrilla leader Edén Pestora in La Penca. A bomb went off shortly thereafter, killing four people and wounding dozens more. Twenty-five years later, one of the victims, a Swedish journalist named Peter Torbiörnsson, goes back to Nicaragua to investigate the attack. This is no easy task in a country that still carries the baggage of its lengthy civil war. Like a true detective, Torbiörnsson goes looking for those responsible for the bombing, but his investigation in Nicaragua is also an emotional confrontation with his own feelings of guilt about La Penca. Could he have prevented the attack? In voice-over and directly into the camera, he analyzes his findings and his guilty conscience in a journalistic manner: clearly formulated and from a respectable distance. In passing, the film also sketches a picture of the disillusioned, impoverished Nicaraguans. Will the truth ever be told, or is it better to leave the past alone?