Esquirlas

 It could have been mistaken for footage of a bombing happening elsewhere—a scene of horror taking place in a distant location. This event, however, hit in the middle of life, close-up, in daylight. In 1995, in the Argentine city of Río Tercero, province of Córdoba, an explosion at a military arms factory left devastation in its wake. Debris and dust filled the air, people were injured and killed, and in the years that followed, trauma and illness lingered like invisible aftershocks.

Though the city has never forgotten that tragic day, filmmaker Natalia Garayalde offers a profoundly intimate perspective on this collective memory by turning her lens toward her own family’s experience. In doing so, she transforms a local catastrophe into a powerful, emotionally resonant narrative with sharp political insight.

All acts of remembrance are, in some way, acts of montage. Garayalde meticulously assembles footage captured by her family—avid amateur documentarians—both before and after the explosion. Through this process, memory gains new depth. The archival images are recontextualized, layered with fresh meaning decades later, and the past resurfaces with striking clarity. What emerges is a poignant meditation on how to film an emotion—how to capture the texture of grief, anger, and resilience as they ripple through time. (ML)