The Histories We Tell

FQ columnist Manuel Betancourt discusses the emphasis on history and memory in recent Latin American cinema. Taking Pablo Larraín’s No (2012), about the plebiscite that marked the end of the Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet’s regime, as an ur-text, he examines the more recent films Bardo, falsa crünica de unas cuantas verdades (Bardo, False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths, dir. Alejandro González Iñárritu, 2022), Nuestra película (Our Movie, dir. Diana Bustamante, 2022), and Argentina, 1985 (Santiago Mitre, 2022). These films suggest that Latin American filmmakers are again claiming cinema as an active participant in fashioning how the region’s history is understood, both from within and abroad. Building on the metafictional conceit that to (re)write history is to (re)shape it, they highlight the “story” aspect of “history” by asking viewers to (re)examine how and what one chooses to see, to watch, to remember.