Fate had it that it turned out to be an apparently democratic election we witnessed in Honduras. Juan Almendares does not have the greatest respect for the newly elected president, Ricardo Maduro and his intentions. Yet both are convinced that it's precisely their fight that is the right one, and they have both distanced themselves from hate and revenge. Yet when we later met Ricardo Maduro on a flight to Miami, his views on love, hate and reconciliation were both surprising and intensely personal: a number of years ago, the president's 24-year-old son had been kidnapped and shot. Since then, he had forced himself to work his way from hate to forgiveness, a reconciliation he believes is necessary for the entire country.
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My film's further investigation into the opportunities inherent in reconciliation and forgiveness had now begun to take shape, and my cameraman and I decided to travel to the U.S.A. to interview the Cambodian writer, Chanrithy Him. She had chosen to get through her pain by writing a book about her childhood suffering during the Khmer Rouge's reign of terror in Cambodia (1975-79). In her book, 'When Broken Glass Floats', she not only describes how the majority of her family was wiped out by the Khmer Rouge, but also how eventually, she was helped by the self same persecutors to escape to the U.S.A. Chanrithy emphasizes that the books has a number of objectives. It is a memorial to the murdered, for the Cambodia she loved as well as being a symbolic act of vengeance against the Khmer Rouge, whose brutality she provides an insight into within the pages of her book. The book is not just meant to help her, but also others through their own personal trauma, and it is also written in the hope of preventing such an act of genocide ever taking place again.
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