The Official Story

The mother comes to realize that her daughter may be the child of a desaparecida, a victim of the forced disappearances that occurred during Argentina's last military dictatorship (1976–1983), which saw widespread human rights violations, including many thousands of murders.[8] The film is set in Argentina in 1983, in the final year of the country's last military dictatorship, during which a campaign of state-sponsored terrorism produced thousands of killings and torture of accused political leftists and innocents alike, who were buried in unmarked graves or became desaparecidos.Alicia Maquet, a high school history teacher, and her husband, Roberto Ibañez, a government official, live in Buenos Aires with their 5-year-old adopted daughter, Gaby.At first Ana laughs as she tells of her apartment being ransacked by officials, but soon begins to sob as she describes being held captive and tortured for having lived with Pedro, who was labeled as subversive, even though she hadn't seen him in two years.She asks Roberto to let her sing "En el país de Nomeacuerdo" (In the Country of Idonotremember), a nursery rhyme, to her mother and, after she hangs up, Alicia tearfully grabs her purse and walks out the door, leaving her keys behind.The film is based on the real political events that took place in Argentina after Jorge Rafael Videla's reactionary military junta assumed power on March 24, 1976.During the junta's rule, the parliament was suspended, unions, political parties, and provincial governments were banned, and, in what became known as the Dirty War, between 9,000 and 30,000 people deemed left-wing "subversives" disappeared from society."[11] The Official Story can be considered alongside a group of other films that were the first to be made in Argentina after the downfall in 1983 of the last Argentine dictator, Gen. Leopoldo Galtieri, and his autocratic regime.The 1986 US VHS release by Pacific Arts video was a 4:3 cropped TV print with burnt-in English subtitles, but fully uncut with original Spanish audio in mono.In 2003, Koch Lorber put out a remastered US DVD release featuring an HD transfer presented in anamorphic 1.78:1 widescreen, and 5.1 plus original 2.0 Spanish audio tracks.Unlike the 2003 Koch Lorber and Umbrella DVDs, the 2011 Arrow DVD is inferior to them due to utilizing a NTSC-PAL converted 4:3 letterbox presentation of the Almi Pictures US theatrical print with burnt-in English subtitles.