San Francisco Chronicle by Amy Biancolli
Nostalgia for the Light is a strange and stunning work of art: a poem disguised as a movie about astronomers in the Atacama desert of Chile.
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France, Germany, Chile · 2010
1h 30m
Director Patricio Guzmán
Starring Gaspar Galaz, Lautaro Núñez, Luís Henríquez, Miguel
Genre Documentary
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We explore the skies above Chile's Atacama Desert with astronomers who study the stars and search for the origin of life. Meanwhile, on the ground, women work to reclaim their family histories, searching for the remains of their loved ones that had been dumped in the desert.
San Francisco Chronicle by Amy Biancolli
Nostalgia for the Light is a strange and stunning work of art: a poem disguised as a movie about astronomers in the Atacama desert of Chile.
A truly insightful art film that still manages to be easy-going and unpretentious.
A moving meditation on history, knowledge and mortality.
Los Angeles Times by Kenneth Turan
A film of rare visual poetry that's simultaneously personal, political and philosophical, it's a genuine art film that's also unpretentious and easygoing.
What starts out as a beautifully depopulated filmic exercise - it's 14 minutes into the movie before Guzman introduces any people - becomes toward the end a nearly unbearable examination of good and bad in the human heart.
Village Voice by Michael Atkinson
Often stark and ravishing, Nostalgia for the Light is most moving as a manifestation of the filmmaker's stubborn righteousness.
It's also poetic and meditative in a way that never feels pretentious.
The Guardian by Peter Bradshaw
It is deeply intelligent, intensely and painfully political, and yet attempts, and succeeds, somehow to transcend politics and perhaps even history itself.
The Globe and Mail (Toronto) by Stephen Cole
Patricio Guzmán's documentary, Nostalgia for the Light, pays equal attention to the astronomers and searchers, regarding their quest as the same – a search for life.
The New York Times by Stephen Holden
The film's passionate insistence on remembrance lends it a moral as well as a metaphysical weight. Mr. Guzmán's belief in eternal memory is an astounding leap of faith.
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