Directed & Written by: Luis Argueta, Justo Chang; The Silence of Neto is set in the six months that followed the CIA-staged coup that overthrew Guatemalan president Jacobo Árbenz Guzmán in 1954. As a nation loses its innocence, an asthmatic 12-year-old boy, Neto Yepes (Óscar Javier Almengor) begins to discover his identity and sexuality while navigating love and death. Neto’s  friends discover a machine gun near a dead body, overwhekmed they withdraw into silence. His father, Eduardo (Julio Diaz), is mute about the relationship between his mother Elena (Eva Tamargo) and his uncle Ernesto (Herbert Meneses), his father’s brother. All around him, in the taut atmosphere of tension, silence prevails.  Only Ernesto seems to rebel and urges Neto to break the silence in order to breathe.

LUIS ARGUETA is a Guatemalan-American film director and producer whose work has been focused on transnational immigrant stories since 1977. His feature film, The Silence of Neto was the first Guatemalan film to receive international acclaim. His film series on immigration (abUSed: The Postville Raid; Abrazos; and The U Turn, 2010) valorized the true human face of immigrants, their resilience as a community, and celebrated the contributions immigrants have brought to American society. Argueta produced and directed Collect Call (2002), and Los orígenes del silencio (2005), a documentary about the 20 years leading up to the production of The Silence of Neto.

The Carnegie Museum of Art in partnership with Row House Cinema presents the 58th Carnegie International Film Festival curated by Rasha Salti. The festival opens at Row House Cinema on Friday March 3 and runs through Sunday, March 11.   

—–Showtimes—–
El Silencio de Neto (The Silence of Neto) – 3/4/23 @ 4:30 pm
El Silencio de Neto (The Silence of Neto) – 3/5/23 @ 3:30 pm
El Silencio de Neto (The Silence of Neto) – 3/8/23 @ 6:30 pm