We're back with our series of "Latin American Films to Watch Before You Die". For our sixth entry in the list, we're exploring 'La Historia Oficial' (The Official Version) by Luis Puenzo, which won the most prestigious of all prizes in cinema, an Academy Award, for Best Foreign Language Film.
The first Latin American film to win the Award, it depicts a middle class woman's developing awareness of her role in the tragedy of the 'desaparecidos' - the 30,000 'disappeared' by Argentina's military regime between 1976-1983 - including babies born in police custody to pregnant prisoners before they met their end.
The acclaimed movie, clearly inspired by true events, takes place in Buenos Aires, Argentina in the late spring of 1983, just months before democracy was finally restored in the country. The time was a time of "transition" for Argentina. The unrest and political mutation are reflected in the way the main characters transform before our eyes alongside the storyline which takes us deep into their lives, their minds and most of all, their fears.
With Jorge Rafael Videla's military dictatorship finally coming to an end and after several bloody protests across the territory, the military administration finally geared up for democratic elections that would ultimately be won by Raúl Alfonsín, from the Radical Civic Union party, on October 30, 1983.
The Ibánez family, made up by Alicia (played by celebrated Norma Aleandro) a history teacher at a boys-only private school, Roberto, the patriarch of the family, a somewhat shady, money-loving businessman and their adopted six year-old daughter, Gabi (portrayed in the film by Analia Castro) whom they adore and treat like a little princess, live in a beautifully decorated home in the city centre. They drive nice cars, they wear nice, expensive clothes, they look happy. The Official Story is that the Ibánez are an archetypal family of the dictatorship.
And yet, as the film starts its journey into memory and politics, at the boy's school where Alicia is teacher, we begin to see things are not what they seem. That there is an unofficial story.
The opening still shot in a grey, gloomy day with school boys singing the national anthem is powerful and sets the mood for whole the film. The teenage boys in the classroom are shown as agitated and cannot seem to hold in the sentiments of social unrest that the whole country is experiencing despite the conservative attitudes shown by their (also conservative) history teacher, Alicia. Little do we know that our main character, will soon embark on a journey of her own, political, historical or personal, that she never imagined.
"If publishing the truth is forbidden, lies and poverty will triumph together with ignorance. Truth, like virtue, contains its own rewards"
Alicia's journey starts when she gets reunited with her once-best-friend Ana, which, in an incredibly emotional, Oscar-worthy performance, tells her about her abduction and torture at the hands of the military. At first unwilling to believe what her friend tells her, Alicia starts to doubt the origin of everything that she holds dear in her life, including about the one thing she loves more than anything else, her daughter Gabi.
Could Gabi be the daughter of a disappeared? Puenzo soon puts Roberto and Alicia on trial in the film as suspected accomplices in a system that oppresses, tortures, and kills its own people and, the unimaginable, stealing their babies to be put with government-friendly families.
The Ibanez family is part of the "neoliberal bourgeoise" that benefited from socioeconomic, cultural and political cronyism, while profiting from wealth from US businesses and overall neoliberal reforms. All of this, together with his family, is what, in the second-half of the film, Roberto is seen desperately trying to save from being destroyed by the collapse of the military establishment and by the emerging of the news on media outlets of the disappearance of political dissidents, the "desaparecidos".
Alicia faces her husband with questions and fears. Roberto's ties and certainties, which he relied on for everything from business dealings to his adopted daughter, are collapsing in his grasp. At this point the official "story" and history of the characters disintegrate: Alicia and Roberto's marriage appears to be over and as per Gabi, with a phone call she says goodnight to her father, in what feels like the last phone call they will ever have.
As the official version collapses in the two hours of film, we are left with our deepest emotions and memory – the one things that we'll never lose.
