A Movie from the Past

There is a store near the Insurgentes Metrobus station that sells used DVD movies. Every time that I pass by, I stop in the store and see if there are any discs that I want to buy.  (Yes, I am a proud dinosaur, and I still have a DVD/Blue Ray player!)  One of the movies that I found and bought was a film that I used to show to my Spanish III classes each year when we would do a unit on Argentina.  The movie is called "La Historia Oficial" (The Official Story).

This Argentinian movie come out in 1985, shortly after the fall of the nation's military dictatorship.  It won an Academy Award and a Golden Globe for best foreign language movie as well as numerous other awards.

The protagonist is Alicia, the wife of a well-to-do businessman connected to the military government.  They have an adopted daughter, but Alicia knows little about the details of the adoption.  As the power of the dictatorship begins to wane, more and more news about the government's atrocities come to light.  Political opponents were apprehended and vanished.  Among the disappeared were pregnant women whose babies were given to the families of government officials or supporters.  Alicia begins to wonder if her daughter might be the child of a "desaparecida", and she begins to investigate the circumstances behind the adoption.

The lead was played by Norma Aleandro, one of Argentina's most famous actresses.  She went into exile during the dictatorship, and this movie marked her triumphant return to the Argentinian cinema.

Alejandro had never seen the movie, so last weekend we watched it together. The disc that I used to play for my students had English subtitles.  (The sometimes fast-paced dialogue in Argentinian Spanish was hard enough for me to follow.  It would have been very frustrating for my students.)  This disc is a remastered version funded by the Argentinian National Film Institute in 2015.  Of course, it did not have any English subtitles.  Even though I still couldn't catch every single word, I had seen the movie so many times that watching it without subtitles was not a problem.  And in spite of seeing the film so many times, it was still very moving.

A few of my former students follow this blog.  I wonder if they remember "La Historia Oficial"?