Nostalgia for the Light is a moving and ambitious documentary that successfully explores astronomy, genocide and the never ending quest for answers to create a poetic and remarkable experience. The Atacama Desert in Chile is an otherworldly environment that provides the perfect setting for stargazing. Yet, as director Patricio Guzmán states, celestial bodies are not the only bodies being searched for out in this unforgiving landscape but also the remains of the thousands of disappeared political prisoners that were murdered during Pinochet’s regime.

The film’s great strength is in how it delicately balances the personal stories with existential and far reaching questions about our existence and the things that connect us. It is amazing that in only a short 90-minutes,…

I love it when films feel like they were made for me. As a Hispanic American with heavy Chilean heritage and ancestry, whose mother escaped from Chile to the U.S. towards the beggining of Pinochet's rule, I feel like theirs a lot in this film that I was able to personally relate to. I may not have had the same exact experiences, but I still felt the pain within the words of those who lost loved ones to Pinochet's dictatorship government and the concentration camps. The distortions on space and time throughout Nostalgia for the Light were also incredibly interesting to witness and observe, allowing us to form a connection between the vastness of the universe and our own past…

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Film #20 of 30 in my March Around The World | 2017 Challenge (Chile)
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Documentary film director Patricio Guzmán is revered in his home country of Chile and has gained international acclaim for his keen political insights and fearless filmmaking. Many consider this to be his best work to date, so I just had to give it a look as part of this year's challenge.

As documentaries go, this is a very odd blend of several studies, with the central theme being humanity's relationships with the past. There's an overarching premise here that "the present," in absolute terms, is unknowable; only "the past" can be known. And without getting into the huge body of philosophy and religion that…

315/1001 films you must see before you die

Its easy to see why Nostalgia for the Light is so well regarded as it explores the horrific long lasting consequences of Augusto Pinochet dictatorship juxtaposed with the beautiful exploration of the universe in seeking answers to life long mysteries.

Theres quite a contrast between the genocide that darkens the worlds past to the documentaries use of visually stunning imagery and a elegance score. Like a poem the narrator recalls much of what is good and bad of the Atacama Desert, a fascinating place where there is so little human life and yet so much important history. What resonated well was the incredibly moving scenes by family members forever lost in the…

Nostalgia For The Light seamlessly connects the constellations of astronomy and the fossilisations of archeology with that of the tyrannical Pinochet dictatorship. Past. Present. Future. Time is nothing more than a grain of sand basking in the expansivity of the Atacama desert. A multitude of particulates comprising the essence of universal history. Humanity, throughout centuries of beguiling empires and colossal civilisations, expends precious present time to research forgotten pasts in order to shape the future. To better society for the next generation. To evolve as an intellectual species. To live and learn. Astronomers magnify their tender visions towards the stars, attempting to acquire omniscient knowledge for the origins of life. Stars that, whilst illuminate the night sky with faint glimmers…

Here's one I might not have come across for ages had it not been for this letterboxd community, and more specifically users like <a href= letterboxd.com/eastcommanoah/>Noah East and <a href= letterboxd.com/robertrond/>Robert Mathison, who raved to no end about its beauty. I have kept the thought of seeking this documentary out in my mind for the last several months, and last night I finally took the journey through Nostalgia for the Light.

It is well known by now that the cinematography in this film is gorgeously subtle in its documentation of astronomy, the Chilean desert, and the remembrance of the past while simultaneously constructing viewpoints on the future. Patricio Guzman pulls off a captivating feat here, creating surprising intrigue by perfectly…

„Nostalgia for the Light” is a documentary about the effects of the dictatorship of Pinochet in Chile. But it is not the kind of history/politics documentary you might be used to. This is not a montage of news reels and archival footage set to the popular rock music of the period interwoven with talking heads of witnesses and experts telling the story of „what it was like”. The film is more of an art piece or a literary experiment. Patricio Guzmán, the director, came up with the idea of putting two things together: astronomy and the search for human history by scientists among the stars, and the women who lost their loved ones to the dictatorship and their efforts to…