Absence of Me

Argentine filmmaker Andrés Habegger embarks on a deeply personal journey in this documentary, seeking to recover memories and information about his father, Norberto Habegger, a journalist and Montonero activist who disappeared in Brazil in 1978 during a joint operation between the Argentine and Brazilian military. Traveling to places that were part of his life and revisiting old photos and his childhood diaries, the director fills in the gaps in a family history that was interrupted.

An old woman wears herself out with every movement, entrenched in her room. Each of the gestures of her aching body reminds her of the years of prison and torture she experienced as a political prisoner of the Uruguayan dictatorship. At the end of the 1960s, Élida Valdomir was an armed leader of the Tupac Amaru movement and never denied her commitment. In this almost closed door, yesterday's memories and today's images constantly respond to each other.

Carmen is taking a course in her neighborhood studying home care for the sick and elderly, sponsored by the government with the aim of social inclusion of the Gypsy people. Meanwhile, behind the discreet behavior of her everyday life, Carmen has a secret love life that defies the strict rules of her community.

Collective film made in times of confinement. April 2020. The film gives visual form to inner worlds—what the directors see and how they see it. How they inhabit their spaces, their bodies, their fears and perspectives in isolation, and how they connect with the “outside worlds.”

Her father drew and painted. He also created murals and recorded family life with a home camera. He was interested in the intersection of justice and beauty, in everything that enchants the passing of the day and in every event that politically shapes an era. He painted horror, mercy, and imagination; he drew diverse human figures with his brush, sometimes associating them with situations that provoke indignation at a world order that favors the few. This is how Melina Terribili portrays her father, Carlos Terribili, a prominent Buenos Aires artist whose murals, such as "The Grey Angel," epitomize his technique and ideology. Terribili uses diverse materials: those she filmed recently in excellent resolution and in the 1990s on video with lower resolution, as well as fragments filmed on Super-8 and video by her parents.

Diana Rutkus was born a nomad, but she learned this only years later. The daughter of a tightrope walker and trapeze artist mother and a lion tamer and drummer father, Diana spent her childhood between the circus tent and the trailer. Cirquera thus explores a search for a diffuse and fragmented history.