Captive (2003 film)

Captive Spanish Cautiva is a 2003 film that concerns itself with what happened to the children of the people killed after the 1970s military coup. The film states it was made with the support of Argentine National Institute of Cinema and Audiovisual Arts. Captive was an award winner at the 2003 San Sebastian Film Festival.

Cautiva is a reflection on both the legacy of the Dirty War, and the legacy of citizens who were disappeared by the government during the 1970s and 1980s. Once Argentinas current democracy was established, research begun to be collected about the atrocities committed from 19761983 under the military government. It was discovered that children born to disappeared parents while they were in captivity had been routinely adopted by militarily connected families. There were efforts to reconnect these children with their biological relatives. Often this meant any living grandparents or other more removed relatives, as the parents were still disappeared. This proved difficult, which the film illustrates, as Argentinas judicial system had to navigate the most sensitive way to approach a legal situation so entangled with family life and deeply rooted emotions. Film critic A. O. Scott especially lauded the young actor in the film, writing, We first meet Cristina Quadri, the heroine of Gastn Birabens Captive, at her 15th birthday party, in 1994. She appears to be a perfectly ordinary, if exceptionally lovely, Buenos Aires teenager. Cristina lives with her doting uppermiddleclass family her father, now retired, was an officer in the national police force and attends a starchy Catholic girls school, where she daydreams through her lessons and sneaks cigarettes with her best friend. But Brbara Lombardo, the extraordinary young actress who plays Cristina, has the kind of soft, melancholy features that seem to hold reservoirs of emotion, as if she were haunted by the memory or perhaps the premonition of an unbearable hurt. ........

Source: Wikipedia