Our diassapeared.

Juan Mandelbaum's documentary film Nuestros desaparecidos (Our Disappeared) is about the aftermath of Argentina's 1976 military coup, when tens of thousands of people, mostly young leftists were jailed tortured, and killed. In this highly personal work, Mandelbaum puts a special emphasis on the possessive pronoun in the title. He wants us to know that the people who were detained and disappeared were our compatriots, our colleagues, and our friends. They were our sisters, our children, and--as we learn at the end of the film in the most heart-wrenching episode--our own parents.

Mandelbaum returned to Argentina from his place of exile in the United States on the 30th anniversary of the coup, hoping to learn about Patricia Dixon, an old university friend whose name he had seen by chance on an internet list of the former regime's victims. Patricia had been one of the kindest mid gentlest people he knew in his school days. He had assumed that she had been leading a quiet life with a husband and children and so was shocked to find her on the list of the dead. Mandelbaum embarked on a mission to interview her surviving family and friends and to piece together the story of how she--along with Mini Vinas and Jorge Chinetti, two of his former Colleagues from an idyllic summer camp in the mountains--had ended up on a list of those who had "been disappeared," to use a gruesome form of the word made common on the aftermath of wars like this one.

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A meeting with Patricia's younger sister, Alejandra, who has kept a photograph of Mandelbaum and Patricia together at a birthday party in happier days, leads to an encounter with one of Patricia's former work colleagues. The colleague recounts the growing terror that young activists--militant, s and pacifists alike fell at the time as the noose was tightening. Military ghost squads driving Ford Falcons were kidnapping their victims and taking them to torture centers--one at a military school mid one at the notorious Olympic Garage. From there, many were put into airplanes and pushed out from high altitudes over the Rio de la Plata. Navy. Admiral Emilio Masseras. the mastermind of this evil and a man never brought to justice, had an especially macabre motto that will go down in history's darkest pages: "First we kill the sympathizers, then we kill the indifferent, and then we kill the timid "he has been quoted as saying.

Mandelbaum interviews Rafael Belaustegui, an industrialist and father of three children. Valeria. Jose, and Martin, who all took up a youthful if violent revolutionary cause and were killed by the regime. Mandelbaum also speaks with Ruth Weisz, a German Jew who was given refuge in Argentina as a child during World War II only to have her son Marcelo killed in detention year's later in her adopted country. These interviews provide a sad and final acceptance of the past. the kind of acceptance that only parents who outlive their children can understand fully. "We defend life as best we can," says Rafael with stoic reserve, "But if I had known I'd lose all three ... I don't know...."

The final interviews with Jorge Chinetti's and Mini Vinas's two daughters are the film's finest moments. In the years of the Dirty War. it was common for detainees to have their children taken away from them and given in secret adoption to military families, but these two women had the good fortune of being able to grow up with their true family names. Mini's daughter Ines was raised by her aunt and uncle in California and never told the truth of how her mother had saved her before she was killed. It happened at the Buenos Aires zoo, where Mini had gone one afternoon with Ines when she was a baby. In an almost inconceivable moment. Mini managed to hide the baby as the ghost squad approached so that only she would be kidnapped to face torture and certain death. The awful truth of this moment was told to Ines years later, and she recounts it on camera while shedding heart-breaking tears.

Jorge's daughter helps to end tile film on a heroic collective note at a ceremony honoring her father 30 years after his death. Speaking in a strong voice over a loudspeaker, she holds her head high and declares. "I have only one thing to say: Jorge Chinetti. detained and disappeared--Presente! His 30,000 companeros, detained and disappeared--Presente!" This. Mandelbaum wants us to know, is the true legacy of Nuestros desaparecidos.

Our Disappeared will be broadcast as part of the Independent Leas program on Public Broadcast Stations (PBS) in the United States in September 2009. Check your local listings for dates and times.

Louis Werner, a documentary filmmaker based in New York City, is a frequent contributor to Americas. All images are from the documentary.