The 1985 film “The Official Story,” directed by Luis Puenzo, tells the story of an affluent family living in Argentina in the early 1980s, during the aftermath of the “dirty war” and the military coup in the mid 1970s. The movie examines truth, family and the role of the “official story.”
Alicia Marnet Ibanez is a history teacher, married to a wealthy businessman who has what appear to be dealings in shady government business. He is well connected, so when they are unable to have children on their own, he is able to find a child to adopt. Roberto Ibanez tells his wife not to ask questions. And she doesn't – until she starts to see other people questioning the conventional wisdom. An old friend returns from exile, a student challenges history as it is written and people protest in the streets against the kidnapping of their loved ones.
Eventually, Alicia is led to the likely truth – that her daughter WAS taken from a mother who did not give up her child willingly – and was herself then taken. The child's grandmother meets up with Alicia and suddenly, the truth is out there.
At the end of the film, we see Alicia walk away from her husband who lied to her, and then gets abusive with her after she confronts him with the news. Gaby, meanwhile, is at her grandmother's house, in a rocking chair, singing softly to herself.
Here's where she might be today, at about age 25.
“Gaby Ibanez is busy working for Amnesty International, one of her first jobs after graduate school at Columbia University in New York. The Argentinian woman is married to a Brazilian man she met in New York while interning at the United Nations during graduate school. Her undergraduate degree is from Harvard.
Ibanez was raised by her adoptive mother and maternal grandmother for many years in Buenos Aires. Her father was killed when she was 8, but she doesn't talk about him often. He left a sizable estate to both women, so she was well taken care of.
She did spend summers with her paternal grandparents and cousins, and remembers fondly how they had a great time, even without many creature comforts.
Gaby learned at a young age that she was actually one of the “los desaparecidos” or “the disappeared ones” during the “dirty war” in Argentina. Her mother, Alicia, was very straightforward with her about the situation after she learned about the circumstances under which the adoption was granted.
Ibanez and her mother moved to the United States during her teenage years, as her mother became more active in Human Rights Watch and later Amnesty International.
Most recently, the young woman has been involved in monitoring the civilian court trial against retired army colonel Luis Alfonso Plazas Vega for his alleged role in the disappearance of 11 people in Argentina in 1984.
Both women are involved in services each year for “The Day of the Disappeared” which “started in 1983 by the Latin American non-governmental organization FEDEFAM (Federación Latinoamericana de Asociaciones de Familiares de Detenidos-Desaparecidos) at a time when disappearances arose from authoritarian rule” according to Amnesty International.
A UN group reports that there are more than 41,000 pending cases of disappearances in 78 countries.
***Popcorn tidbits***
I thought it was strange that Anna and Alicia were drinking egg nog at their house while they were getting drunk. It didn't seem like it was Christmas – so I wonder if it wasn't a seasonal drink in Argentina.
I wonder if the subplot with the English teacher was intended to make Alicia look like she was growing, or that she would have been naïve enough to have an affair with him?
I liked that the film was left open ended. We assume that Alicia left her husband for good, but we don't know. And we don't really know what will happen to Gaby (thought I took a leap to write her biography above.)
The scenes with the English teacher and the students acting as they were reading the script reminded me so much of parts of “Dead Poets Society.”
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