THE REPENTANTS

In 1970, at the height of the military dictatorship in Brazil, five detained guerrilla fighters came out in public to disavow the armed struggle and praise the regime. Such was the repercussion of their declarations that the government decided to make revolutionary retractions a strategy of the State. Members of the resistance were tortured into publicly issuing a mea culpa, and by 1975, roughly forty former regime opponents had taken part in these “repudiations.” The Repentants tells the seldom-remembered story of former militants who embarked on the cause at a very young age only to be arrested, tortured, and converted into a propaganda tool for their enemies.