Night of the Pencils

La Plata, 1976. Secondary school students run a campaign for a student discount on the buses; they collect signatures, submit a petition and the discount is won. The same year the government of the country changes hands. In September houses are raided at night. The students named in the campaign are taken one by one; the youngest is sixteen. The places they are held are not official. For days the families can find no record anywhere. The film tells it through one student, one of those who came back. Hector Olivera directs. Alejo Garcia Pintos, Vita Escardo, Pablo Novak and Leonardo Sbaraglia are in the cast. It is an Argentine production. The film rests on a real event in La Plata in September 1976; the students were abducted, tortured, and most were never found. It was made a few years after the end of the military government and was the first widely seen account of the case. Its title became the way the event is remembered in Argentina and it is commemorated every year. The matter it treats is proportion; the demand was a bus discount and the answer was abduction. The film does not avoid showing the torture and the scenes are hard. The first half gives the everyday life of the young people at length, and that contrast sharpens the second half. The narrative rests on testimony and some of its details were argued over later. The ending gives the names of those who did not come back. Its limit is harshness; the violence is explicit, there is no hope, and the viewer is not protected. Who it is for: viewers of Latin American history and political film. Who it is not for: it is very harsh, dark, and the ending bitter.