‘The Red Hangar’ Berlinale Review: Due Obedience and Moral Collapse After Chile’s Coup

Latin Americans are painfully familiar with the notion of “due obedience.” During the trials of military officers following the region’s dictatorships, the term became shorthand for a legal and moral argument according to which crimes and abuses committed by mid- and lower-ranking members of the armed forces could go unpunished on the grounds that they were merely following orders, not acting on their own initiative. It is a concept riddled with ambiguities and moral gray areas. In films like The Red Hangar, set during the Chilean military coup that overthrew President Salvador Allende on September 11, 1973 and ushered in a brutal dictatorship, those contradictions are laid bare with unsettling clarity.

The fiction debut by the co-director of the documentary Red Eyes approaches the subject with austerity and rigor, shot in stark black and white. The film follows Captain Jorge Silva (Nicolás Zárate), a Chilean Air Force officer caught in a moral vise: forced to obey orders he neither believes in nor agrees with. Silva is a respected paratrooper who trains young cadets at an Air Force Academy—a mid-level position within the military hierarchy. Taciturn and unsmiling, he carries out his duties with cold efficiency, unaware that within hours his life will be upended when the coup transforms his workplace into a detention and torture center.

Silva carries an additional burden. Years earlier, he saved Allende’s life during an assassination attempt, an act that now makes his loyalty to the new regime suspect. Within the armed forces, doubts about his allegiance circulate quietly but persistently. Silva insists that his duty is to follow orders, and that he will do so. The officers in charge of the newly established detention center—most notably Colonel Jahn (Marcial Tagle), who regards Silva as a near-enemy because of past events—decide to test him. They push him to extract confessions from detainees labeled as subversives, forcing him into decisions that may run directly counter to his own beliefs. For the most part, Silva complies. He does so in silence, without protest, without explanation, and without offering spectators any clear indication of what he truly feels—or, more importantly, what he might eventually do.

Hangar Rojo builds its drama around these mounting tensions, gradually leading Silva toward increasingly radical choices in which the idea of “due obedience” becomes ever more unstable. If a superior orders you to commit an illegal act, are you obligated to carry it out? And if you refuse, what are the consequences—legal, professional, personal? The film offers no easy answers. The restless camera stays close to Silva at all times, yet within the compressed timeframe of the story he never articulates his views. What becomes clear, however, is that both he and other officers, such as Colonel Soler (Boris Quercia), are trapped in an impossible situation. Whatever choice they make, punishment seems inevitable.

An austere film, co-produced with Argentina and shot entirely in Mendoza, The Red Hangar tells its disturbing story with restraint and precision, and from an unusual perspective. Films about Latin American dictatorships rarely ask viewers to identify—or even empathize—with an officer of the armed forces. Yet Fernando Villagrán’s novel Disparen a la bandada, on which the film is based, takes precisely that risk. Zárate’s performance reinforces this discomfort: his Silva is not likable, warm, or meaningfully different from his peers. He is curt, severe, and unwelcoming—a man who makes no effort to endear himself to prisoners, subordinates, or the audience. That moral opacity is precisely what makes the film so challenging.

In just 80 minutes, Hangar Rojo plunges headlong into the heart of the beast. In a distant sense—and not only because of its black-and-white cinematography—Schindler’s List might serve as a faint point of reference. The film ultimately suggests that there are still many stories left to tell about Latin America’s dictatorships, regardless of how tiresome the subject may seem to some. Argentine INCAA president Carlos Pirovano has publicly claimed to be fed up with such stories, yet his name appears in the film’s credits—surely by virtue of his position rather than his enthusiasm. That irony feels like an unexpected act of poetic justice, adding a final sharp note to this unsettling and accomplished Chilean-Argentine co-production about the darkest chapters in our shared history.