The Official Story

Alicia, played by Norma Aleandro, teaches history in Buenos Aires and is married to a prosperous businessman. Five years earlier they adopted a girl her husband brought home. When an old friend returns from abroad and tells her what happened to her, Alicia starts asking who the child is. The film's choice is to tell the story not from the mothers of the disappeared but from a middle-class woman. Alicia is someone who chose for years not to know, and the film looks at her not with sympathy but with patience, showing scene by scene how the distance between knowing and not knowing closes. Luis Puenzo directed and wrote the screenplay with Aída Bortnik. Héctor Alterio plays the husband. It brought Argentina the Oscar, becoming at the ceremony on 24 March 1986 the first Latin American production to win Best Foreign Language Film. Aleandro also took Best Actress at Cannes. Who it is for: viewers interested in Argentina's military dictatorship and in political drama. Who it is not for: anyone who would rather not approach accounts of torture and disappearance.