Film Screening | Nostalgia for the Light

Released in 2011, the film  is set in the Atacama desert in Chile. In the extraordinary conditions of the desert, considered to be one of the driest places on earth, the sky turns nearly translucent making it an ideal site for astronomical research. On the ground, the layers of dry earth have preserved the stories of human presence: Pre-Columbian mummies, 19th century explorers and the remains of political prisoners who were held at the Chacabuco concentration camp and later “disappeared” during General Pinochet’s brutal regime.

Nostalgia for the Light 's compelling force comes from Guzmán's juxtaposition of the scientists who continue to scan the skies of the Atacama desert in search of cosmic secrets and the relatives of the ‘disappeared’, who after all these decades, continue to cut through the unforgiving landscape in search of  the remains of their loved ones.The film is a tour de force, serving  both as a historical documentation as well as a vehicle towards a collective reconciliation and catharsis.