A Twelve-Year Night plunges into the prolonged psychological torture suffered by three political prisoners under Uruguay’s military dictatorship. Based on true events, it centers on José Mujica, Mauricio Rosencof, and Eleuterio Fernández Huidobro, members of the Tupamaro guerrilla movement, who were kept in solitary confinement for over a decade as “hostages” of the regime.

But this is not a film about politics—it’s about what it means to be reduced to nothing. What remains when one’s body, voice, and time are taken away. The film’s power lies in its focus on interiority. It shows how memory, imagination, and madness become survival tools, how even silence can be a form of resistance.

Álvaro Brechner directs with precision and restraint. The cinematography often closes in, mimicking the physical claustrophobia and mental deterioration. The camera doesn’t look away from the disintegration of dignity—but it also captures moments of absurd humor, hallucination, and intimate defiance. There is humanity even in degradation.

Antonio de la Torre delivers a devastating performance as Mujica—raw, weathered, almost mute for long stretches. His silence becomes a form of rebellion, his endurance a quiet triumph. The absence of overt violence makes the psychological impact even more haunting.

This is a film about waiting without knowing what for. A meditation on survival stripped of certainty, calendar, or conversation. And a quiet homage to the power of ideas—to the fact that regimes may imprison bodies, but not conviction.

La noche de 12 años is harrowing, necessary, and deeply respectful. It reminds us that history is not only made in crowds and slogans, but also in darkness, in solitude, in the refusal to give up what makes us human.