Nostalgia for the Light

The Atacama Desert in Chile. Because it is the driest place on earth, astronomers build telescopes here and look into the past of the universe. In the same desert, thanks to the same dryness, the bones of people killed and buried during the dictatorship are preserved. Women have spent years sifting the sand with their hands looking for their relatives. Patricio Guzman directed and narrates. The documentary's idea is that these two searches are the same: the astronomer and the archaeologist both look at the past; light and bone are both documents left from it. Guzman's own history is inside the telling. He was arrested during the coup period and left the country, so the film is not detached. The cinematography gives the desert and the sky one aesthetic; the scale keeps shifting and the difference between dust and star disappears. The most shattering passages are the women's accounts: what a finger bone found forty years later means. Who it is for: viewers who like poetic documentary and stories that reckon with history. Who it is not for: anyone wanting dense information; the film is reflective and slow.