Cruel Separation is the story of General Pinochet's American backed military coup in Chile on the 11th of September 1973, told through the eyes of four women who lived through it. Angela Jeria de Bachelet - wife of an air force general loyal to Allende, experienced the brutality of the military first hand being held in the Villa Grimadi with her daughter Michelle Bachelet (who assumed as the Chilean President in 2006); Joyce Horman, whose story was made internationally famous in Costa-Gavras Oscar-winning film "Missing"; Hortensia Bussi de Allende - wife of deposed President Salvador Allende; Joan Jara English wife of Chilean political singer songwriter, Victor Jara. Narrated by Donald Sutherland, the film covers the coup from different perspectives and how the four women survived, picked up their lives afterwards and carried on in exile and back in Chile, to tell their stories of love and loss.