Images of the absence = Imagenes de la ausencia = Buenos Aires, meine geschichte

A soulful, poetic, presentation of an autobiographical documentary by Argentinian filmmaker German Kral, who sets out to discover why his family, in his mind, never really was a family. Born in Buenos Aires in 1968, the only child to Beatriz and Rodolfo, German Kral studied photography before leaving his country in 1991 to study film in Germany. One thing however had haunted Kral for many years - the sudden disappearance, when he was a young child, of his father after his parents’ separation and his mother’s absolute refusal to talk about it. It was almost as if his father did not exist leaving a feeling of emptiness and sadness in Kral and perhaps the reason for his own escape to Germany to seek another life, his own life. After seven years in Germany, Kral came to the realisation he had to make a film, that it was important for him to tell the story of his family, the love, the disintegration of love, of old age and death and perhaps in the process, to find some understanding as to why his parents separated and the reasons behind his father’s long absence. Using old photographs, home movies, archival film footage and intimate one-on-one interviews with each of his parents and his grandmother, German Kral delves deeper and deeper into his family history, probing and prompting both his mother and his father for their versions of the past, all the while taking the audience with him on his personal journey of discovery. This is a truly beautiful piece of work, chronicling not only his family’s stories, but also providing an evocative visual experience, in black and white, of the city of Buenos Aires, its people and its culture. Also features an archival interview with Jorge Luis Borges. Cast: Beatriz Rossi (mother), Rodolfo Kral (father), Emilia Monaco (grandmother). In Spanish with English subtitles.