Nostalgia for the Light

In the Atacama Desert lie the remains of the thousands of people killed under Pinochet’s dictatorship. This beautiful documentary shows how their relatives are trying to obtain information about them from the military.

The Atacama desert is the most dried out surface on earth and holds some of the world’s largest telescopes, like a space station in a universe of sand and salt. But the desert also holds the remains of many thousand prisoners who opposed Pinochet’s dictatorship, never to be seen alive again. Their relatives still fight to release information from the military. Guzman’s beautiful documentary unites man’s longing and fascination for endless space, with endless grief and hope of laying recent history to rest. 

Films from the South (Archive 2010)

An Ode to the Missing

This film is part of the section “An Ode to the Missing,” exploring Latin America’s dark history of dictatorship and the unsettling parallels to our own time.