La historia oficial

Plot synopsis:
The film is set in Argentina in the 1980s, in the last years of the country's last military dictatorship, during which a campaign of state-sponsored terrorism produced thousands of killings and torture of accused political leftists and innocents alike, who were buried in unmarked graves or became desaparecidos.
Alicia, a teacher, and Roberto, a government agent, live in Buenos Aires with their adopted daughter, Gaby. On Gaby's fifth birthday, Alicia wonders about Gaby's real parents, a topic her husband has told her to ignore, although he seems to know the story of his daughter's adoption.
Ana, Alicia's longtime friend, returns from exile and tells Alicia about having been held and tortured for having lived with a man labeled as a subversive. When she tells Alicia that she had seen children taken away from their parents in jail, Alicia begins to think that Gaby's parents may have been similarly arrested.
While searching for records about Gaby at a hospital, Alicia learns of an organization searching for missing children. A woman there, Sara, believes Gaby may be her granddaughter, whose parents had disappeared.
Alicia, like other members of the Argentine upper class, is not aware of how much killing and suffering has gone on in the country. Her views are challenged by a fellow teacher, Benitez (Patricio Contreras), and some of her students. One student argues that the government-issued history textbooks are "written by murderers." When Alicia reports the student, Benitez intervenes to protect him. Alicia gradually becomes friendly with Benitez as her research brings her closer to the truth.
Roberto faces stress at work due to the machinations of his colleagues, several of whom disappear over the course of the film. Ana confronts him and accuses him of denouncing her and causing her arrest. He also comes into friction with his liberal father and brother, who frown on his ties to the ruling conservative military elite and argue in favor of social justice.
Alicia brings Sara home to meet Roberto, and he becomes furious. That evening, Alicia surprises Roberto when she tells him that Gaby is not home, saying, "How does it feel not knowing where your child is?" Although she tells him that Gaby is at his mother's house, he becomes enraged and assaults her. The violence is interrupted by a telephone call from Gaby. While Gaby sings a nursery rhyme to Roberto, Alicia gets her purse and walks out the door, leaving her keys behind.
The film's final shot shows Gaby sitting in a wicker rocking chair at her adopted grandparents' house, continuing to sing.

Tags: murder, storytelling

Review:
In the powerful 1985 film The Official Story, Director Luis Puenzo tells the story of a teacher's awakening to conscience at the end of Argentina's "Dirty War" of the late 70s and early 80s.
The film is about one mother's search for the truth about her adopted daughter and her discovery brings harsh political reality very close to home.In The Official Story, Alicia (Norma Aleandro) lives a comfortable middle class life.
She teaches History to high school students and enjoys a family that includes her well-to-do husband Roberto (Hector Alterio) and 5-year old adopted daughter Gaby (Analia Castro).
Not used to asking questions, she believes whatever she has read in history books and is confused when one of her students tells her that "history is written by assassins." She sees the demonstrations of the "Mothers of Plaza de Mayo", a group seeking information about missing family members but remains uninvolved.
Alicia begins to wonder if her own child was the daughter of a political victim and questions her husband but when he is evasive, she suspects that he may be hiding a dark secret.
Although fearful at the prospect of losing Gaby, Alicia is determined to find out about her daughter's past and begins to search hospital records and government archives.
I was observing the cruelty of the government and thought "my God, totalitarism is always the same, and no matter if the violation of human rights occurs in Argentina under the military regime, in Cuba under the Castro dictatorship, in Chile under Pinochet, in Europe during Hitler, people suffer the same and the least we can do is to feel compassion".
The sad fact is that thousands of families in Argentina fell the emptiness that this film induces every single day of their lives.
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.
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.
From the lighting to the framing of each shot to the near perfect performances the viewer goes on a journey into the darker and darker mystery as a loving adoptive mother must ask "where did this precious child come from?" If you want to get an inkling of life in Argentina in 1985 and the true meaning of "los disaparacidos" (the disappeared ones) see this one..
By Roberto's actions and evidence she personally gathers, Alicia begins to suspect that the father of their daughter may have been taken from a woman who is among Argentina's "disappeared," which was likely a victim of violent political repression.Films like these can be taken for what they are.
However, let me warn you that although `La Historia Oficial' was based on true stories, be careful to assume that all of the facts and evidence that you see in the film are true.
Usually they are so busy educating people on the issues that they forget the real point of a movie - to tell a good story.The Official Story is an exception in the genre: it is well written, well acted, has characters that you can relate to...
Luis Puenzo's Academy Award-winning movie "La historia oficial" ("The Official Story" in English) focuses on this.
But the discovery that her adopted daughter might be the daughter of a disappeared woman forces Alicia to rethink her previously neutral view of the government.The movie reminded me of John Sayles's "Men with Guns", which also focuses on a middle-class person in Latin America who starts to reconsider his views.
A searing political exposé situated in the immediate aftermath of Argentina's Dirty War (1976- 1983), director Luis Puenzo's second feature THE OFFICIAL STORY became the first Argentinian movie to snatch Oscar's BEST FOREIGN LANGUAGE PICTURE laurels.
In 1983, the seemingly perfect life of a middle-class high-school history teacher Alicia Ibáñez (Aleandro) starts to crack when she begins to suspect the birth parents of her adopted daughter Gaby (Castro, an elfin darling), now 5-year-old, might be victims of political persecutions during the military dictatorship.
Apart from the film's polemical angle in cashing in on a topical powder keg, in retrospect, the film's more lingering sway is underlain by its less argumentative depiction of women's place in a typical patriarchal society, through our heroine, Alicia is an ordinary woman in every aspect, mostly hedged in her domestic remit, a mother and a wife, Roberto has never cared to ask anything about her job, as if it is just a hobbyhorse to keep her busy.
During Roberto's apoplectic wrangle with his leftist father Jose (Battaglia) and brother Enrique (Arana), Alicia's total silence speaks volumes in that tableau vivant - women have no voice in politics (neither in religion, as glanced through Alicia's vain endeavor inside a confessional, belittled by a snotty man of God), they are subservient, ancillary and biddable, but, as a human being, every sane soul is endowed with the judgment of right and wrong, and Puenzo's sensible work pays the highest homage to that, which makes the ending incredibly uplifting albeit with such a small gesture, as it would happen in real life.
The story of Alicia's friend Ana and the circumstances involving her daughter all point to great distress in the country's government.
La Historia Oficial is a wonderful film that tells a sad story based on true events.
She begins as a well-to-do Argentine school teacher who has always accepted what she has been told as true, but as the movie progresses, so does her curiosity and openness to the fact that the "official story" she has been told may not be the truth.
The Official Story tells of a woman who is searching for information about the unknown origins of her adopted daughter.
There is an "official story" that Alicia has contently lived with her whole life, but now begins to question the validity of it when she realizes that things aren't as they have always seemed.
The audience is introduced to Alicia as a privileged upper-class woman who hasn't a care in the world, but who then slowly comes to realize the horrors of her current society and begins to question everything.
It is a powerful story of an awakening from ignorance and the pursuit the truth, not from one of the disappeared victims of the Dirty War that traumatized Argentina in the 1970's, but of a middle-class history teacher who unknowingly supports it.
And yet, when a comfortable, conservative schoolteacher (Norma Aleandro) begins to question the background of her own adopted daughter, she does more than simply put her family at risk: in her dogged pursuit of the truth she recovers a measure of dignity and identity buried under a lifetime of complacent ignorance.
The film invites comparison to the best thrillers of Costa-Gavras, but the impact is more personal than political, sparked by Aleandro's convincing portrait of a loving mother forced to choose between domestic security and an untroubled conscience.
It is a powerful story of children stolen from families in Argentina and given to those who support the government.
I couldn't help but think of the child protective system in this country, where the weight is heavily towards taking children and getting them adopted as soon as possible instead of trying to work with families to fix their problems.
This happens over and over in South America, where we have supported military juntas that oppress the people.This is a beautiful and powerful film.
I do accept the film was useful to let foreigners know what have happened here, but this alone does not make a great movie -not even a good one..
For those of you that do not know, the dvd fails to include that this movie won the Academy Award for best foreign film of 1985, deservedly so.
Although a fictional story, La Historia Oficial portrays the lives of people in a real moment in history, and describes situations that undoubtedly occurred in the lives of numerous Argentineans in the late 70's and first half of the 80's.
I especially like the foresight that the student in Alicia's class has in raising the point that history is often written only in the perspective of who is in charge or who wins a conflict.
This movie, however, does an excellent job in preserving the truth of what happened in Argentina and showing what things were happening in that period of turbulence in Argentinean history.
The open ending ensures that the viewer is influenced and thinking about the story outside of the theater and beyond the running time of the movie.
The personal struggle that the main character, Alicia, goes through in discovering the truth about her adoptive child is heart-wrenching.
The fact that this movie is based on historical truth makes it an even more emotional story and I believe that the movie serves as a testimony to all those who have been affected by the situation.
Although the film tells a personal story, it symbolizes all of the affected people of Argentina and throughout the world who have experienced similar saddening events and losses.
I learned a lot about the history of Argentina and, although I have never experienced such events in my personal life, I was able to easily relate to the characters in the film.
I believe that by the end of the film Alicia has answered these questions in how they pertain to her own life and to her family.
"The Official Story" won the Academy Award for best foreign film, but I do not believe it deserved it.
The film is based in Argentina when the government dictatorship was making may people very angry, let us say.
I do think, however, that a short inclusion of real life facts at the end of the movie would have made me realize quicker that this is a true story and several people are suffering exactly what is displayed in the movie and more..
Often times I felt like i could personally relate with the main character Alicia, although I have never been in any situation similar to this one.
The story focuses around a specific character Alicia whose husband is involved with the government.
They had adopted a daughter named Gaby and after some time Alicia begins to question where her daughter came from.
I saw this movie for the first time right after it had been nominated, in my home country of Argentina.
And the 'abuela' (grandmother), as she discovers the truth and wants to take the granddaughter away from the family predicted many similar stories that were to happen in Argentina later on.
A thumbnail, however, is: A bourgeois Buenos Aires high school history teacher and mother of an adopted 5 year old girl begins to suspect her daughter may have been born to one of Argentina's thousands of missing people (Los Desaparecidos) who disappeared (probably kidnapped, tortured, etc.) while the nation was in the grip of a junta (1976-1983).
This Oscar winner is a very well directed and acted human drama with ominous rumbling political undercurrents which stays focused on Aleandro's sterling portrayal of the mother though it does raise the specter of tainted official history.
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.
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.
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.
Although the ending is ambiguous and the viewer never finds out whether Alicia obtains the truth of her daughter, it seemed to me implicit that she does.
I believe that if the director had chosen (which thankfully he didn't) to extend the film a little longer, the viewer would have seen that Alicia consents in giving her daughter back to the elderly woman.
At the end of the film, after the husband has beaten up Alicia and is listening to his daughter on the phone, the camera begins to slowly dolly towards his face.
Either way you look at it, Alicia's search for the official history (truth) or the official story (lie) regarding her daughter works as a powerful way in conveying what the central theme of the film iswhat is the truth and what are the lies..
Directed by Luis Puenzo, The Official Story was truly an eye opening film in my view.
Taking place shortly after the 1976 coup d'etat in Argentina, this film mainly follows the life of Alicia, Roberto, and their adopted child Gaby.
Knowing that Gaby is adopted, Alicia realizes that she could have been the daughter of an individual who indeed suffered due to the unforgiving military junta of the time.
Thankfully, Alicia shrugs this incident off, and at the end of the movie, Roberto, albeit indirectly, admits that Gaby indeed is the child of the two deceased parents in question.Overall, The Official Story was a well-made film.
The best picture that I have ever seen that was made in 1985 was that year's winner for Best Foreign Language film: Luis Puenzo's extraordinary debut film LA HISTORIA OFICIAL, better known to the English-speaking world as THE OFFICIAL STORY.
For a first film, the director's hand is remarkably sure here; he knows the characters and the territory, and his handling of the actors produces what in the theatre is often known as "magic." The film stars Norma Aleandro (in a fierce, towering performance that should have earned her an Oscar) as Alicia Marnet de Ibañez, a history teacher at a Buenos Aires high school, married to a successful businessman (Hector Alterio), raising their adopted five-year-old daughter Gaby (Analia Castro), and living the good life, blissfully, and one suspects later on, perhaps deliberately, unaware of what is happening and what has happened to her country in recent years (the film takes place shortly after the "dirty war" in which many Argentinians were rounded up, imprisoned, tortured, and killed).
Later, after Roberto has gone to bed, the two women sit up talking and Ana reveals, in a devastating scene, the torture that she was subjected to because of her relationship with one of the "enemies of the state." During this confession, Ana lets slip that many of the torture victims were pregnant women whose babies were stolen from them and sold to wealthy couples in secret adoptions, to which Alicia reacts almost violently: "Why are you telling me this??" Ana does not answer, but the seed that has been planted is starting to grow, and despite her love for her daughter, Alicia feels compelled to find out how her husband went about adopting the child.
The setting of this movie, took place in the 1970's in Argentina during the Dirty War. A high school history teacher named Alicia is oblivious to the disappearance of many people.
Whereas movies of this nature like to give voice to guerrillas, journalists, the common man or innocent foreigners, Luis Puenzo's drama depicts the life of Alicia, the well-to-do wife of an army officer, Roberto.
Evidently life is good for them; Alicia is a high school history teacher blissfully unaware of the crimes her happiness is built on.But one day Alicia starts wandering about the origin of her daughter, Gaby: Roberto brought her home and Alicia always believed she came from a mother who didn't want the child or couldn't keep her.
Because of Roberto's blind and cruel conviction, Alicia realized that all of history is fiction, and for once she understands and experiences the truth.Although the representation of the greater truth through this family was well done, the ending was the most hindering point of the film because nothing was resolved.
I found this Argentinian (Spanish language) film in the book 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die, the title did not suggest anything particular to me, but the Academy Award win, plot description and of course the recommendation was enough for me to try it.
Basically the period known as the Dirty War has concluded, in Buenos Aires lives high school history professor and well-to-do housewife Alicia Marnet de Ibáñez (Norma Aleandro) who is happily married to government agent and successful lawyer husband Roberto (Héctor Alterio), and together they have adopted daughter Gaby (Analia Castro).
It is on the daughter's fifth birthday that Alicia becomes curious to know about Gaby's real parents, but her husband avoids the topic and tells her to ignore it, he obviously knows the official story of how their daughter came to be available for adoption.