Best movie of this year hands down!

Truly Dreadful Film

If you don't like this, we can't be friends.

i must have seen a different film!!

After the end of the Dirty War, a high school teacher sets out to find out who the mother of her adopted daughter is.Like many progressive actors and others in the country, the lead actress in the film, Norma Aleandro, was forced into exile. She traveled to Uruguay first and Spain later. She returned after the fall of the military government in 1983. Aleandro once said, "Alicia's personal search is also my nation's search for the truth about our history. The film is positive in the way it demonstrates that she can change her life despite all she is losing." Argentina's history is a dark one. It may not get the coverage of Nicaragua, El Salvador or Chile, but it had some of the same problems of unrest in the 20th century. In fact, few places in Central and South America seemed to have it easy, with dictators sprouting up all over. Some of them, sad to say, were put there and / or backed by the United States, something we as a nation have still not properly atoned for.Whether by choice or not, director Luis Puenzo has remained largely an Argentine filmmaker. He did make an American film (or at least a film with American actors) in 1989, "Old Gringo", but then went back to Argentina. One wonders what the difference is that makes some directors go international and others go into relative obscurity outside their home countries.

Alicia is a bit of an oddbod, a History teacher who seems ignorant of her own nation's past. The reasons for this state of denial slowly reveal themselves, centering on her adopted daughter Gaby, and the wider search for truth and justice for the missing victims of Argentina's military juntas. Alicia's husband Roberto is to some degree complicit with the regime, though quite to what degree is not revealed until almost the very last frame of the film.The Official Story has a subtle but complex narrative. We go along thinking Alicia's quest is to find the origins of her adopted daughter. However, her quest is much more fundamental, to do with the nature of her marriage and her husband's character. The answer, when it comes, is unequivocal.The slow-drip feed of the plot and fine performances from Héctor Alterio as Roberto and Norma Aleandro as Alicia make this compelling viewing. Events centre around one particularly ugly period in Argentinian history, but the message of human endurance, and potential for brutality, is timeless. A small masterpiece.

La Historia Official is a well-made film about awakening from passive complicity in evil, in this case, forced adoption. The Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo were and are an inspiration to those who struggle to uncover and resist abuses in adoption practices, be they the enslaved Irish women of the Magdalen laundries or the many indigenous peoples who had children forcibly removed from homes to be adopted by whites. Most of adoption does not involve abduction, but to turn a blind eye to the fact that it does exist, is to be passively complicit, as was the protagonist in this film.The scene in which the teacher realizes that tremendous evil has indeed been perpetrated, and that she may very well be the beneficiary of such evil, is staggering. Norma Aleandro is a talented enough actress that we believe her initial rejection of this revelation, and her gradual evolution from passive cohort to courageous seeker of the truth.

Luis Puenzo's 'La Historia Official' captures a moment in Argentine history from the perspective less common for it's home audience; the aristocracy. Inside the junta military (military rule) of Argentina from 1976-1983 there were many like Alecia Marnet, with their upper class stability and indifference to a rule that left them in power of their own destinies. Alecia is somewhat different in her work as a history teacher seemingly unaware of how history is written by the victors. Her subsequent change of heart parallels that of her country, without which change this film could never have made.There are plenty of compelling stories within 'La Historia Official' that sensitively portray the atrocities suffered by the Argentines at the hand of their own rulers. When Alecia is told of the uncharged detention and torture of her high school friend in a first hand account could hardly believe that such horrors could be committed by those who helped her family build a good life. She dismisses her students' news articles and pleads for peaceful renewal in the country, even threatening to expel them for questioning the official history accounts. Alecia at first reacts in denial to these challenges to authority in protection of herself from feeling guilt and shame for having benefited from others' suffering. It is entirely necessary for her to take the experience personally, through finding her daughter's true identity, for Alecia to accept and then come to terms with her own and her nation's true identity. This psychodrama is furthered by her own husband's opposition to the truth; his definition of success is motivated only when he is recognized with respect. As Alecia finds her husband's own family cannot respect his work, and she in turn can no longer respect him for his deceit, she in turn becomes one of the people before Argentina frees itself from its fascist rulers.There's much to love in any film made about the people like those who are making it. 'La Historia Official' may not represent anything distinctive technically from other films, but its story is a powerful tribute to its own country. The film however is entirely universal. Had the film taken place in fascist Spain or any other fascist ruled country, the only differences would probably be cultural and historical. Through Alecia we find the ability to learn the truth and rise in opposition within ourselves. 'La Historia Official' shows us the truth lay dormant within ourselves but should not be ignored for the sake of accepting the history we are told.