June of 1973 in Santiago de Chile. Leonardo Henrichsen, an Argentine cameraman films his own death. 33 years later, Ernesto Carmona, a Chilean journalist, discovers the identity of the man who shot him.
Final Image is a film about one of the most famous images in history. It is a film about a group of journalists filming a continent sinking in violence, and offers an opportunity to see very rare and revealing archival material from the last 40 years.
Final Image is a journey across the recent history of Latin America as seen through the life and images of a single man.
Eduardo Labarca, a Chilean journalist, saw the scene from a nearby building. He also saw how the soldier tossed the camera into a trash container. Later, Labarca recovered the Eclair 16mm camera, still intact, and with the exposed material still inside. Henrichsen’s images were secretly taken out of Chile and broadcast throughout the entire world.
Shortly after, Leonardo, who had filmed Latin America in the 1950s and its progressive fall into violence in the decade of the 1970s, became a symbol for freedom of the press and the struggle against Latin American dictators. Recently, Ernesto Carmona, a recognized Chilean journalist, found the military archives in which the murderer and those responsible for Leonardo’s death are named.
He decides to search them out in order to confront them with Henrichsen’s death. Carmona begins a journey to discover the details of the events that led to the murder of Leonardo and the rescue of the film, turning this film into an occasion in which to show some of the most rare and eloquent images of this continent in the last 40 years.
RIP Mr Franco.
