La noche de los lápices

Argentina is remembering the Nigh of the Pencils today, so I watched this movie. To a foreign person, this may only be the name of this movie or a catastrophe, but for any Argentinian, it's part of our soul, a part that we all are ashamed and we try day after day to prevent to happened again.

Argentina has a slogan for this event "Nunca mas" (Nevermore), and this movie reflects this event and most importantly, the environment this actions were taken and how did they suffer.

This movie is strong and cold, but show's the real experience of this event with a very smart cast, 7/10 but I will add +1 for being national.

I have wanted to watch this movie for like three years, but my parents wouldn't let me because i was too little. Today i took courage, i sat down at my couch and i watched it, all by myself. Although i already knew the history of "La noche De los lapices" I must say, it really touched me in many ways. I'm 15 now, and until today I wouldn't realize the importance of a bus ticket, i really wouldn't because i would think that that couldn't have history. But now i understood that since the most big thing until the most little thing in the world are here for a reason. I don't know if you people will understand my point here because i actually find it very confusing to explain here. The thing is, these kids were around my age now. And until today i would not think thsat some kid could chamge the world, not the way they did. I personally know Pablo Diaz (the one who survive) because he is a friend of my mom, and i think this film impressed me this way because i actually knew one of them. I also want to say that this movie doesn't show all the facts, because there wasn't only one surviver, there were four of them. And i don't know why this film doesn't show them, because they are part of our history and they changed the country too. And to MaryChase, you can't say that a group of kids could be terrorists just by showing their ideas, that in fact, is what we do in a daily basis, and no one would kidnap us and torture us and KILL us now. SO YOU SHOULD THINK ABOUT IT. I'm sorry if my English is bad, i hadn't practice in a long time.

I have always known of the existence of this film, but avoided it through many years due to the heartbreaking intense scenes I knew it contained. This year we are remembering in Argentina the thirtieth anniversary of the terrible dictatorship, so the film was shown at my high school and I could see it for the first time. There are not enough words to express how I felt; imagining I could have been one of the victims if I had lived thirty years ago. I am definitely against this dictatorship, and I admire all the kidnapped and disappeared guys' mothers, who continue struggling to find their sons, daughters, grandsons and granddaughters. But besides this, I think the interesting side of the film is that despite our political positions (as I'd previously said, mine is against this dictatorship) we can be sure that everything that's happened to these students is TERRIBLE. Terrible because they were standing up for their ideas, they were asking for a decrease in the students' bus ticket price. Whatever our political position is, we cannot deny the fact that everyone has their right to be judged as a human being. The very talented actors let us see, feel and listen how badly, unfairly and terribly those students were taken away from their homes and relatives; tortured to insanity, rapped and killed with no mercy on 1976. I recommend this film to everyone who would like to know what happened. The film only shows one episode of the whole horrible dictatorship. There were about 30.000 disappeared people between those years, not only students but also Jewish people, artists, politicians, journalists... and many more. La Noche De Los Lápices retells one of the -if not the most- horrible and terrible episode during the dictatorship. As an Argentinean I can tell you all that this film touched my heart and made me cry so hard I could hardly watch it through the tears at times. In spite of the pain the film may provoke, it is a "must" for all those people who ever had a dream, an ideal, a wish. Knowing, by listening to my parents, by reading books and by watching this film, the atrocities occurred that night and every night and every day during the dictatorship make my heart jump and my vocal chords shout as loud as I can: "NEVERMORE". Thank you for reading.

I must disagree with "Marychase", undoubtedly she speaks for that sector which still denies the atrocities which occurred under the Argentinian regime. Anyone with a minimum criteria and has seen this film, (which is based on TRUE facts, and not supposedly), cannot say that children are terrorists, just because they had an ideal and thought differently and then were prived of their lives. This movie shows how far hatred can go and how a regime can intend to erase beliefs and dreams of a better world. The "terrorist" argument has been used and abused as an argument against a movement which fights a dictatorship. It's like calling "la resistance francaise" terrorists during the nazi occupation. In my opinion this movie also shows the common reality between several southamerican dictatorships.

I have seen this movie only twice, and the last time was at least ten years ago, but the memory has stayed with me. As my country becomes more repressed and dictatorial, this film has come back to haunt me.

The events start out very simply but under a paranoid regime, quickly escalate to a point that must have been unimaginable even to those living in Argentina at that time. When I first saw it, my heart ached for those children and their families caught up in a situation that was hard for me to imagine; now it seems closer than I could ever have dreamed.

The very simplicity of this film and its straightforward telling of the story of these bright and idealistic teenagers is all the more powerful for its lack of embellishment. There is no need to beat up the story and its hand-held cameras and lack of sophisticated lighting or makeup has the effect of breaking through the fourth wall and making us participants in the unfolding drama. We can't get away but neither can we help, and our powerlessness reflects that of the children and their families.

It should be mandatory viewing for all those who think "it can't happen here".