The Blonds

The Blonds
Theatrical release poster
Directed by	Albertina Carri
Written by	Albertina Carri Alan Pauls
Produced by	Marcelo Cespedes Barry Ellsworth
Starring	Analía Couceyro Albertina Carri
Cinematography	Catalina Fernández
Edited by	Alejandra Almirón Catalina Fernández Carmen Torres
Music by	Gonzalo Córdoba Charly García Ryuichi Sakamoto
Distributed by	Primer Plano Film Women Make Movies
Release date	April 23, 2003 (2003-04-23) (Buenos Aires)
Running time	89 minutes
Countries	Argentina United States
Language	Spanish

The Blonds (Spanish: Los rubios) is a 2003 Argentine and American documentary/drama film, directed by Albertina Carri, and written by Carri and Alan Pauls.^[1]

The award-winning film documents the search of director Albertina Carri as she investigates what happened to her family during Argentina's "Dirty War.", particularly surrounding the disappearance and murder of her parents. Film critics have called the work an autobiographical semidocumentary work.

The drama/documentary was filmed in black-and-white and in color. In addition to appearing on-camera as herself, Carri is played by actress Analía Couceyro.

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Synopsis

The film deals with a child, whose parents were among the tens of thousands of Argentines who were murdered during the military junta's Dirty War, who years later has to contend with the pain barely remembered. The child is director Albertina Carri, who returns with her film crew to the house she lived in the 1970s and interviews the neighbors about her parents and what happened.

The title of the film comes from an elderly woman's insistent (though ultimately incorrect) recollection that Carri's family members all had blond hair. Carri tries to determine the following in the documentary: Who were the Carris? How did they disappear? Were they blond or brunette? Were they heroes, or was it merely an invention of those who remember them?

Background

Basis of film

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" were forcibly disappeared from society.^[2]

Style

The documentary/drama has, what some critics have called, an odd style. For example, director Carri appears on film as herself in some scenes, but also uses an actor to portray her in other scenes. A.O. Scott writes that the film "is not so much a documentary as a fictional film about the making of a documentary, or perhaps a documentary about the making of a fictional film about the making of a documentary."^[3]

Cast

Analía Couceyro as Albertina Carri
Albertina Carri as herself
Santiago Giralt as himself
Jesica Suarez as herself
Marcelo Zanelli as himself

Critical reception

Critic A.O. Scott, writing for The New York Times, believes the odd style of the documentary made its impact less forceful. He wrote, "The film's open-ended, recursive structure is central to Ms. Carri's intellectual agenda, which is to emphasize the deceptive, indeterminate nature of the truth...Too much of the film is in a mood of chin-scratching detachment, and this creates a vacuum in which its powerful, confrontational moments lose their force, the trauma of the past pushed nearly out of reach."^[4]

Critic Kevin Jack Hagopian thought the film's message is important, and wrote, "Los rubios is absurd, tragic, and sometimes, hilarious. It seeks not to eulogize the disappeared in solemn, self-important terms, but to make them as alive and real in the cultural sphere as they are in the political arena, a Borgesian lesson in the ultimate fiction: that of ultimate certainty."^[5]

Awards

Wins

Buenos Aires International Festival of Independent Cinema: Audience Award, Albertina Carri; New Cinema Award, Albertina Carri; Special Mention, Albertina Carri; 2003.
Clarin Entertainment Awards: Clarin Award; Best Documentary, Albertina Carri; 2003.

Nominations

Buenos Aires International Festival of Independent Cinema: Best Film, Albertina Carri; 2003.
Gijón International Film Festival: Grand Prix Asturias; Best Feature, Albertina Carri; 2003.

References

^ Los rubios at the Internet Movie Database.
^ The Vanished Gallery web site documenting Argentina's Dirty War, 2007.
^ Scott, A.O Archived 2017-05-10 at the Wayback Machine. The New York Times, film review, "Personally Political: Fallout From the 'Dirty War'," April 7, 2004.
^ Scott, A.O. Ibid.
^ Hagopian, Kevin Jack^{[permanent dead link]}. New York State Writers Institute, State University of New York.