Northwest Film Forum

Veteran Chilean director Patricio Guzmán (Allende) continues to find new and extraordinary ways to never forget the harsh brutality of the Pinochet regime. Using the vast Atacama Desert, its astronomical musings and its archeological and anthropologically pristine treasures as the latest entry, Guzman’s Nostalgia offers up the most varied discussion of Chile’s haunted past yet. While astronomers at the nation’s finest observatories examine distant galaxies in search of probable extraterrestrial life, at the foot of the observatories, the women of Calama are digging through the desert soil in search of their disappeared relatives. A blend of science, philosophy, and politics, this urgent documentary is about the act of looking, which after all is the foundation of cinema.

"3 1/2 stars: archaeology and architecture to form a resonant reflection upon the preservation of memory...."Nostalgia" states [director Guzman's] case so beautifully that even skeptical physicists will be thoroughly convinced." —Seattle Times

"Beautiful, dreamy, and slow...A cinematic poem about the history of Chile and the history of the universe." —The Stranger

Read more about Patricio Guzman and the making of this film at the NY Times