Colonia 2016

In 1973, Lena (Emma Watson) is an adventurous Lufthansa flight attendant and is in relationship with Daniel (Daniel Brühl), a West German journalist and activist living in Chile. Upon arrival in Santiago, she reunites with him, and they spend their days in the capital peacefully. The US have abandoned Chile’s democracy and Soviets are propping a dictatorship under Allende (a communist).

One day, the two become entangled in a Chilean military coup at a time when supporters of deposed President Salvador Allende are getting rounded up by the military under General Augusto Pinochet (Marcelo Vilaro).

When Daniel is abducted by Pinochet’s secret police DINA (he is identified in a line-up by a masked informant. Daniel is taken to a secret location and tortured mercilessly), Lena tries to find and save him. Daniel’s fellow revolutionaries tell Lena that Daniel has been take to the Colonia Dignidad (the Colony of Dignity), they refuse to provide any more help, neither does the German embassy (as Colonia Dignidad is listed as a charity organization)

The “Colonia Dignidad” is an isolated secret organization living in a sealed-off rural farmland and enclave near the Andes mountains. The organization presents itself as a charitable mission run by Paul Schäfer (Michael Nyqvist), a former Wehrmacht colonel and army medic who evaded capture and trial following World War II by disguising himself as a Lutheran pastor and lay minister, later fleeing to Chile to build the organization.

Lena joins the organization to rescue Daniel (even though she was warned by Amnesty International that she may not be able to escape), only to learn it is a cult that combines Baptist-style tenets, punitive agrarian lifestyles, Nazism, and aggressive anti-Communism, from which no one has ever escaped. Gisela (Richenda Carey) is the tough administrator of the camp. She confiscates Lena’s passport when she enters.

Lena has to sit through “confessions” with Paul, and stays in a female dormitory with other girls, who don’t speak much. She is made to work in fields picking potatoes and is treated quite badly by Gisela if she complains. Lena meets Doro (Jeanne Werner), who says she is engaged, but when asked, tells Lena that she last saw her fiance 3 years ago during a mixed parade (no more mixed parades since then)

Daniel is brutalized and shifted to the hospital all disfigured. He overhears that patients who are suspected to have brain damage and left alone. Daniel decides to play dumb and is assigned to work at the forge post his recovery. Meanwhile Gisela shows kindness to Lena, who shares how Doro is engaged. That night Paul drags Doro out of the dorm and takes her to a hall, where he accuses her of harboring the devil and has her beaten up by a large gathering of men.

Lena witnesses this through a window and sees Daniel in that gathering. It’s her day 37 at the camp. Lena knows that Daniel is at the hospital and befriends nurse Ursel.

Lena deliberately breaks the rule so that she can be taken to the men’s gathering. But once there, she sees that Daniel is not present. He had hidden in the forge and was escaping that very same night. But Daniel trips the alarms when he tries to cross the fence, this alerts the men’s gathering who leave Lena alone and go after the escapist. Daniel pretends to have wandered off and ran into the fence by mistake.

That night Paul sexually assaults Lena. 130 days have gone by. Daniel finally sees Lena at a mixed parade.

When they reunite, the couple also discover the organization is also an illegal operations center for DINA, who also use it as a political prison, trafficking ring, and torture venue for dissidents of Pinochet. Ursel reveals to Lena that Gisela is her mother and that Ursel was born at the camp. Ursel finds out via a photo hidden in Lena’s locket that she and Daniel were together prior to the colony.

Meanwhile Daniel discovers a network of tunnels underneath the colony but finds that the shafts heading out of the colony are blocked by a large metal door. He takes a series of pics with a camera he steals from the forge office. He keeps the photos with Lena, and says they need to escape within 24 hrs as Paul is planning a poison gas test and Daniel has been selected for it.

Ursel speaks to Lena, while peeling potatoes, and says she knows about Lena and Daniel. Gisela discovers the photos on Lena. To save Lena, Daniel acts as a retard and claims he got the photos from the office of the forge operator. Paul decides to torture the operator.

With the help of a pregnant nurse named Ursel (Vicky Krieps), Lena and Daniel attempt to escape from Colonia Dignidad (via the tunnels under the potato shed). During the escape, they are discovered (after they wade through a submerged part of the tunnel and emerge outside the fenced area of the colony) and Ursel is killed (shot from a distance) but Lena and Daniel escape to the West German embassy. Staff from the embassy betray them (they try to stall Daniel and Lena by saying that the next flight to Germany is in a week, but Lena calls her Lufthansa pilot friend Roman Breuer (Julian Ovenden), who agrees to give her 2 seats on the flight that very day) (then the ambassador (August Zirner) himself stalls Lena and Daniel at the airport and prevents them from boarding the flight till the Chilean authorities arrive. But Lena sees this and escapes with Daniel) but they exit the country by air (when Roman opens the doors to Lena and Daniel and saves them from the chasing Paul. He decides to take off even though his flight permit was canceled), with incriminating photographic evidence against Colonia Dignidad.

In 40 years only 5 people ever escaped Colonia Dignidad. The photos changed nothing in Chile. Paul was eventually arrested at the fall of Pinochet’s regime in 2003 and sentenced to 33 yrs in prison for thousands of counts of sexual abuse of kids. He died in 2010.