The Pearl Button

The Pearl Button - El botón de nácar

by Patricio Guzman

The film was screened in the main competition section of the 65th Berlin International Film Festival where it won the Silver Bear for Best Script. It received Les Lumières Award and the Golden Horse of Taïpeh Film Festival, it went to many festivals in Mumbaï, in London, Busan, San Sebastian, Moscow, Sydney, Athens, Istamboul and Jérusalem. In Canada, it was screened in Vancouver at the VIFF and in Toronto at the TIFF.

This is a poetic and yet an extremely haunting documentary that examines Chilean history and the genocide of the entire ingenious population of Patagonia. The film-maker compares the fate of those indigenous people with Chileans who disappeared during the Pinochet regime. He links these two unlikely themes through the poetic images of water that washes the Chile's 4,270 km (2,653 miles) long coastline. The film claims water has memory, and attempts to prove it visually through the succession of images.

What becomes evident though, it is not water that is the principal player or connector in all those numerous human tragedies, nor is the water's supposed recording of those tragedies really the main concern. The water imagery only serves as a powerful backdrop to all the events. But the ultimate culprit is the inherent cruelty and greed that runs through human nature, and which is very prominent in our modern civilisation. Water is just a neutral bystander to all the horrid events, in the same way as many people were only bystanders to all those cruelties discussed and portrayed in the film at the time they were taking place.

Initial release: October 2015 (France)

Director: Patricio Guzmán

Story by: Patricio Guzmán

Producer: Renate Sachse

Music composed by: Hughes Maréchal, Miguel Miranda, Jose Miguel Tobar

Nominations: César Award for Best Documentary

The film will open on April 29th with English subtitles at Cinéma du Parc, at Vancity  Theatre in Vancouver and Bell Lightbox in Toronto.

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