The Prize

Seven-year-old Ceci has to keep a huge secret without fully understanding what the secret is; her mother has only taught her that certain things must not be said to anyone. The two are living in Argentina in 1977, hidden from military repression in a cold seaside town in winter. Trying at once to give the right answer at school and to deserve the love of her mother and her teachers, Ceci has to work out on her own what she may say and what she may not. Paula Markovitch wrote the film out of her own childhood; the narration never shows more than the child knows, and the threat stays outside the frame throughout. Paula Galinelli Hertzog plays Ceci and Laura Agorreca her mother. It competed at the sixty-first Berlin International Film Festival and won the Silver Bear for outstanding artistic achievement.