Product Description

Cristina’s life is thrown into turmoil when she is suddenly escorted from her strict Catholic school in Buenos Aires and told that she is really Sofía Lombardi, the daughter of activists who disappeared in the ‘70s. Questioning everything she once thought true, Cristina embarks on a journey to find her true identity. Meeting others like herself, the young girl soon discovers the real-life horrors of Argentina's relatively recent past and the nightmare that claimed tens of thousands of lives during the country's "dirty war."

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #46083 in DVD
• Brand: KOCH ENT.
• Released on: 2007-09-11
• Rating: Unrated
• Aspect ratio: 1.85:1
• Formats: Color, Dolby, DVD, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC
• Original language: Spanish
• Subtitled in: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Dimensions: .60" h x 5.30" w x 7.50" l, .20 pounds
• Running time: 109 minutes

Features

• A teenager discovers that she was the daughter of two radical activists who mysteriously vanished in the 1970s in this Argentinean drama. Review From New York Times 11/10/2006 By New York Times Critic A. O. Scott "It is a movie about the consequences of repression.and the first half, which emphasizes a young girl's stunned alienation from the life -- and the self -- she had known, has

Customer Reviews

Outstanding film!
I'm giving five stars to this film not only to compensate the two stars given by another reviewer, but because the film deserves five stars. To appreciate this film you need to have an idea of the political unrest that Latin America - Argentina in this case - went through during the 60's and 70's, and the consequences of the political and psychological repression that still is affecting thousands of lives.
This film is quiet touching and tender, Cautiva is a straightforward, well told story with no-frills, a film that by no means appeals to the aficionados of Hollywood cinema.

The Continuing Mystery of Argentina's 'Desaparecidos'
CAUTIVA ('Captive') is a very effective film by young writer/director Gaston Biraben who has taken to task the impact of Argentina's 'Dirty War' of the late 1970s and succeeds in making a very personal story out of the horror of the 'desaparecidos' tragedy that stole from Argentina some of its brightest minds - and 'reassigned' the children of these 'disappeared ones' who were born in the prisons to political friends of the dictatorship. While the concept is gruesome as history and as content, Biraben manages to recreate that terrifying period of time in terms of the present. This retrospective study makes a huge impact.

Cristina Quadri (the deeply impressive Bárbara Lombardo) lives with her parents in Buenos Aires, attending a Catholic girls' school, seemingly a happy young teenager. One regular day she is called to the principal's office and told she must visit a judge, a frightening concept for a young girl who is forced to go without informing her parents. The judge informs her that she is not 'Cristina Quadri' but instead 'Sofía Lombardi', the daughter of a couple who 'disappeared' in 1978 as political prisoners. A recent blood test Cristina/Sofia thought was a follow-up for a post-op check was actually a test to match her blood with that of the newly discovered true parents' family. Cristina, stunned by her lack of true identity, confronts her 'adopted parents' and struggles with the officials who insist she be returned to her blood relatives. Cristina becomes close to another 'adopted' girl and the two explore their roots, finding that they were born in prisons and then given to police officials to be placed in homes. The transition from adopted to blood family is the path the film explores: despite the comforts of present life the girls must know their origins to fully realize their identities.

The cast is uniformly strong, the concept of the film works well as Biraben snaps us back and forth between the World Cup Soccer Game in Buenos Aires in 1978 that contrasts so gravely with the concurrent underground disappearance of the intellects of the country, and the performance by Lombardo holds the credibility of the story well. There is a fine music score by José Luis Castiñeira de Dios that combines a suite for cello and piano with elements from Mozart's Requiem very effectively. This film has been awarded many prizes since its appearance in 2003: the prizes are justly deserved. Highly recommended viewing. Grady Harp, December 07

Outstanding acting and tale
The young girl who plays the lead here does an amazing job of showing the jolt she goes through when she is torn away from her adoptive parents and told she was the child of people who disappeared during Argentina's '70s military dictatorship. Her love for her 'parents' turns to loathing over the course of the movie as she learns the ugly political truth and returns to what's left of her blood family. This is a pure character study. You don't see much of Buenos Aires, unfortunately. The flashbacks are handled adeptly. Very high quality film-making that teaches us something instead of numbing our brains.