Film Review: M
by Mary Nyiri

M
Director Nicolás Prividera
Argentina 2007

This is a very personal documentary that follows the search of director Nicolás Prividera for exactly what happened to his mother, Marta Sierra, when she became one of Argentina’s “disappeared” in early 1976. Prividera was only six years old at the time, but remembers when they came to his house to take Marta away, leaving no trace. What he finds is no less important than the process of looking, which exposes some of the conflicts at that time with the inability or refusal to reveal the truth today. Prividera, himself controlling his own internal demons, confronts uneasy silences, conflicting accounts, fragile memories, denials and ultimately, the unknowable.