Qué viva Mauricio Demierre

The Sandinista revolution incited hundreds of young occidentals to realise their political ideals in Nicaragua. Everything seemed possible in a country in full socialist reconstruction after decades of Somozas totalitarian regime. A generation of activists joined the revolution and experimented with it daily.

From 1982 onwards, the Contra, a counter-revolutionary guerilla financed by the USA, made attacks on the country to weaken the Sandinists. The civil war claimed 50,000 victims, among whom there were some twenty young foreigners.

After four years spent in Nicaragua, Swiss agricultural engineer Maurice Demierre was killed in an ambush on 16 February 1986. He became a martyr of the revolution.

The film goes back over Maurice Demierres and his companion Chantal Bianchis journey, from their departure from Switzerland in 1982 to Chantals pilgrimage to Maurices grave twenty years after his death.

For her, this was a way of coming to terms with the death of her companion, just like the Nicaraguan people had to come to terms with their revolution.