Selective Fire

Letters to a Dictatorship

2006

A hundred letters written by Portuguese women during the Salazar dictatorship were found by chance in a second-hand bookshop. By confronting today the women who wrote these letters with the ghosts of the past, and revealing important archive material, Letters to a Dictatorship takes us on an in-depth journey through the obscurantism that dominated Portugal for more than 50 years.

Solar Plexus

2019

Noah battles to overcome his grief at the death of his mother, a journey that takes him from his flat to beyond the stars. An animation in stop-motion and oil paint.

Una carta de Leticia

2017

Leticia was 17 years old when she was kidnapped from school. She had arrived in Cipolletti a year earlier from the Vicente López National School in Buenos Aires. This letter was found while searching for photos and testimonies from those days.

In the Time of the Butterflies

2001

Based on the book by Julia Alvarez. Three sisters become activists during the Dominican Republic's Trujillo regime when members of their family are killed by the government's troops.

The Circus

2010

In the vestibule of a hospital room, a young boy waits to see his dying mother. The clamor and spiralling movements of bodies around him intensify, forming a grotesque circus—a cacophonous circle that pushes the child back, depriving him of one final touch of his mother's hand. Using rotoscoped drawings suggestive of charcoal sketches, as well as 3D and object animation techniques, The Circus compels viewing with its unsettling realism. Colour is employed metaphorically to subtly express the promise and the memory of maternal affection. Nicolas Brault's highly personal film, suffused with poetic modesty, casts a poignantly sincere gaze on the heartbreak of a child facing the fearful, mysterious experience of his mother's death.

The Blow: Chronicle of a Conspiracy

2006

Argentina, 1973. The return of democracy marks the beginning of a new countdown to the next coup d'état: on March 24, 1976, the worst dictatorship in Argentine history is installed, the bitter fruit of a plot carefully hatched for months.

The Thousand Miles

In 1950s Italy, two middle-aged brothers go on a magical odyssey through their past as they take part in the world's most beautiful car race: the Mille Miglia.

Todo es ausencia

1984

Five Argentinian women, with missing relatives from the military dictatorship that ruled the country, explain their emotions and feelings about all that happened.