Search - Spoils of War on DVD

A good documentary about the children of the dissapeared

05/25/2004

(4 out of 5 stars)

"I saw this movie last weekend. I was browsing through our nice local video club and the map of S America caught my eye, being myself from Argentina... I had not heard about this movie before, and enjoyed it greatly (as much as one can really "enjoy" a movie about the tragedies of the 1970's in Argentina). It has very interesting interviews to several of the sons and daughters of the dissapeared (desaparecidos) by the last dictatorship who were kidnapped by their captors and kept from their families. It also contains interviews to many "abuelas de plaza de mayo" (the grandmothers of plaza de mayo) and some documentary footage too.At some times it was difficult not to be moved by the interviews. The movie will be definitely interesting to people interested in the political struggles in Latin America."

Would Make a Good Companion Piece to "La historia oficial"

Amazon customer | 10/05/2006

(4 out of 5 stars)

"This documentary interviews the mothers and children of Argentina's disappeared. During Argentina's Dirty War, 30,000 "political subversives" were rounded up and disappeared. Most, if not all, are believed to have been tortured and then killed. According to a confession by a naval officer at the time, many were drugged, stripped naked and dropped into the Atlantic Ocean from helicopters (thereby disposing of the bodies). However, one of the idiosycracies of Argentina's Dirty War (the practice of "disappearing" political leftists was widespread throughout Latin America during the Cold War) was that the children of the disappeared were often spared and placed in the homes of people friendly with the military dictatorship. Pregnant women were often kept alive until they gave birth so that their children could be placed in the homes of "conservative" childless families.

This documentary deals specifically with the fate of these children. Mothers of the disappeared talk about how heartwrenching it was to have their (adult) children taken away from them and explain how their organized protests and search for their grandchilden gave them the strength to go on. The children of the disappeared (now young adults themselves) talk about their vague memories of their biological parents (when they could remember them at all), their relationships with their adoptive parents and when they found out about what had happened to their real parents. Some of the grandchildren and grandmothers who have been reunited talk about that experience as well.

This documentary would make a great companion piece to "La historia oficial." Ironically, while this documentary interviews people that "actually" lived through the experience, I still feel that the film "La historia oficial" (one of my favorites of all time) does a better job of drawing the viewer into the emotional dilemnas of all those involved in these situations. I suppose my preference for the film is also based on the fact that it deals with issues related to the dirty war itself (i.e., How can so many people "not see" what's going on when such abuses are taking place?). I still would love to find documentary that deals more specifically with Argentina's Dirty War, and all that transpired at that time.

Overall, worth viewing."