In 2017, we put a feature together on the burgeoning Chilean New Wave of cinema: Beyond Pablo Larraín: 6 Chilean Directors You Should Know. They included filmmakers you probably are very familiar with, including Sebastián Lelio and Sebastián Silva. But cut to six years later, if we updated it, there would be many more— many women too— and certainly the addition of Academy Award nominee Maite Alberdi, known for her celebrated 2020 doc “The Mole Agent.” And Alberdi is back with her latest doc, “The Eternal Memory.”
Debuting earlier this year at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival, “The Eternal Memory” tells a profound and moving love story that balances vibrant individual and collective remembrance with the longevity of an unbreakable human bond. The film centers on two prominent Chilean figures, Augusto Góngora—a prominent journalist and television host who actively covered the Chilean dictatorship of the ‘70s and ‘80s— and Paulina Urrutia— an actress, Former Minister of the National Council of Culture and the Arts of Chile and his romantic partner for 25 years. Eight years ago, he was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease. Both fear the day he no longer recognizes her.
And in this heartbreaking but so moving doc (which we adored; read our review here), Alberdi weaves in the personal—the love story between Augusto and Paulina—and the historical—the history and trauma that the country of Chile had to unpack for years thanks to a vicious 17-year-long dictatorship—into a tale about memory, holding on to the past, trying to move on, holding on to the present, and cherishing what’s left of a potential future.
Here’s the official synopsis:
Augusto and Paulina have been together and in love for 25 years. Eight years ago, their lives were forever changed by Augusto’s Alzheimer’s diagnosis. As one of Chile’s most prominent cultural commentators and television presenters, Augusto is no stranger to building an archive of memory. Now he turns that work to his own life, trying to hold on to his identity with the help of his beloved Paulina, whose own pre-eminence as a famous actress and Chilean Minister of Culture predates her ceaselessly inventive manner of engaging with her husband. Day by day, the couple faces this challenge head-on, relying on the tender affection and sense of humor shared between them that remains, remarkably, fully intact.
An MTV Documentary Films movie co-produced by the aforementioned Pablo Larrain, “The Eternal Memory,” opens in New York on August 11 and in Los Angeles on August 18 before expanding after that. Watch the first trailer below.
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