'The Official Story'

The first Latin American film to win the Best Foreign Feature Oscar.

Well worth it. It's an unsettling look at the aftermath of the Dirty War in Argentina where thousands went missing due to their leftist views. Right under everyone's noses, mass groups of people were taken in the night never to be seen again prompting the mothers and grandmothers of the missing to protest as the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo.

But this isn't a story of the Dirty War so much as that of a middle-class family. The wife, Alicia, is challenged by a longtime friend after her husband disappears and learns that someone close to them turned him in to the government. Alicia learns that babies and children of the disappeared to sold to families.

She starts digging and begins to unveil an unhappy set of circumstances that gave berth to her own family. The blind, polite eye she gave the Dirty War is soiled with the truth. As much as the film is supposed to unsettle the characters, it unsettles the viewers just as much.

It forces us to question the idea of history. How subjective, persuasive and flowing a narrative history can be with time and manipulation. That even the United States is not exempt from restructuring our past in order to avoid embarassment.

However, no country or people are alone in this. If the manipulation was history wasn't going on, it would always be perceived as going on. A truly comprehensive history course doesn't exist unless you have a lifetime to truly sink your teeth into it.

Every civilisation has its pockmarks and dirty laundry. How we come back from those moments matters the most.