TArgentina, 2003
Dir. Albertina Carri

o mourn is one thing, but to mourn people without remembering them is another.

Argentina’s “Dirty War” during the late 1970s and early 1980s left more than 25,000 people missing. Albertina Carri is the daughter of two “desaparecidos,” people whose exact fate still escapes the families and friends they were taken from. Her film, “The Blonds,” is a combination documentary and fiction film that follows her on a search for clues as to who her parents really were.

She uses an actress to talk to former neighbors, the police and the Center for Forensic Anthropology about Ana María Caruso and Roberto Carri, who were kidnapped in February, 1977, and whose three daughters were sent to live with an uncle and aunt.

She incorporates numerous elements into her film, balancing on the line between truth and imagination. Parts of the film use ever-smiling Playmobil figurines, and the film slides from black-and-white to color as easily as a film shot with hand-held camcorders.

All the interviewed neighbors say – often more than once – that the arrested couple and the three little girls were all blond. The dark-haired Albertina, the only daughter shown in the film, silently stands in the background during these interviews.

“The Blonds” weaves its way through fact and fiction and, since the seven-year “Dirty War” is an unacknowledged part of Argentine history, no one will ever know what events are factual and which are fictitious.