‘The Red Hangar’ Director on His Timely Fiction Feature Debut About Moral Dilemmas and a “Gesture of Humanity Amidst  Barbarism”

The Red Hangar (Hangar rojo), the fiction feature debut of Chilean director, producer and screenwriter Juan Pablo Sallato, may be set in 1970s Chile as a military coup unfolds, but the themes and human challenges it explores feel very timely.

It tells the story of Captain Jorge Silva, a former head of Air Force Intelligence, who receives an order that will change his life forever. He is tasked with transforming the Air Force Academy where he trains young cadets into a center for detention and torture. The reason is the coup by a group of miltary officers, led by General Augusto Pinochet, that overthrew the socialist President Salvador Allende.

The Red Hangar world premiered in the Perspectives section of emerging voices in the Berlin International Film Festival. Inspired by true events and shot in black and white, the movie has been described as the first Latin American thriller to explore…