The Eternal Memory

“I’m Pauli. We’ve known each other for over 20 years. You’re married to me,” says Paulina Urrutia when she wakes her husband Augusto Góngora in the morning. He was once a well-known TV journalist in Chile. In the 1970s and 1980s, he clandestinely filmed testimonies about human rights violations under the Pinochet dictatorship. So as not to forget.

Góngora has been suffering from Alzheimer’s for several years, and his wife, a famous Chilean actress and former minister of culture, has to remind him every day of who he was and is, who she is, and why they are together. She does so unrelentingly, with extraordinary devotion and ingenuity.

Combining archive footage, home videos and sober filming by the director (or by Paulina herself, for example during Covid), Maite Alberdi (The Mole Agent) creates a tender and unforgettable portrait of a national and personal past, a great love, and a disease that goes from bad to worse. Winner of the Sundance Grand Jury Prize in the World Cinema Documentary Competition.