The film Hermanas (2004) by Julia Solomonoff, « remaining silent is fobidden, but speaking is impossible»

Abstract

Director Julia Solomonoff‘s 2004 film Hermanas revolves around the theme of silence and secrecy and the crucial role both played in the Argentinian dictatorship‘s successful elimination of all political opposition. Dictatorships always magic away History so as to better re-write it. In the case of Argentina, nothing more remained to be written, secrecy had instated Anti-History in its place — a sort of black hole where memory once was. Only the words of people ―in the know‖ still retained the power to liberate from secrets. Julia Solomonoff has chosen two sisters to explore the painful issue of this particular form of secrecy, which cancer-like, eats away at its victims and reduces them to nothingness. The film does not presume to judge but rather shows and if it ends on the promise of reconciliation, it is a reconciliation predicated on need to recover memory.