Gabriela grew up listening to the story of the country her family fled, of the grandfather who survived, and of the home left behind. In time, she came to understand that a part of her mother remained trapped inside the walls of that home, and that this invisible absence shaped the distance between them. Fifty years after her mother’s flight, Gabriela travels to the city of Valparaíso to reopen the doors of that house and confront what was left unresolved. Among cracked walls and inherited silences, she restores the lost home and recovers a long-suppressed emotional story, shaped by exile and the violence of the Chilean dictatorship. In the tender reunion with her grandparents, and experiencing the physical distance from her mother, she must decide whether to keep hiding her feelings or, for the first time, break the cycle of wounds that has shaped three generations, and finally come to understand her mother—and herself.

Where the Silence is Heard is a participant of the 2022 (Egg)celerator Lab.