International Competition
, The Bruised Body of the Planet
International Competition, The Bruised Body of the Planet
Argentina
A playful home movie. A girl is filming with her father’s camrecorder. Her mother chit-chatting with her relatives, her father smiling at the camera, her little brother monkeying around, the older girls with their teenage preoccupations, the lively parties, and the peaceful and stable existence of an apparently ideal family. The smiles of the parents and the children’s teasing induce a sense of safety. An explosion takes place - everything is shaken to its core and forever changed. People running on the streets, screaming and crying, fleeing in their cars. The girl doesn’t know what she’s witnessing – an attack, a bomb, a war, a natural calamity. With insane courage, she continues to film what will mark the definitive loss of her childhood’s paradise. Filmmaker Natalia Garayalde was 12 years old when the arms and ammunition factory in her city, Rio Tercero, exploded and caused a disaster of epic proportions in the community. More than 20 years later, the director returns to her natal city, rediscovers her family archives, and sets out to investigate the traumas of the past, which go beyond a simple accident, revealing the intricate threads of some obscure political interests and a colossal case of corruption. Through a deeply personal lens and through the prism of her family’s intimate universe, the author manages to distill a macro portrait of the political and economic intrigues in Argentina in the 1990s, the repercussions of which still make themselves felt today. The film is a unique cinematic testimony to the inseparable bond between the personal and the political, between the ordinary and the exceptional, between the corrupt past and the painful present. (Monica Stan)