La noche de los lápices

hey folks you know where i can find the English subtitles for that movie?

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This movie is not for the faint hearted, but it's the most realistic one I have ever seen about the brutality of a military dictatorship. But what I like most is the description of the friendship of college students who, despite imprisonment and tortures, keep their dignity and their desire to struggle jointly for a better world. A movie which should be watched by every apathetic teenager - the shock may really make him/her mature his/her views and attitudes.

To Deny our past, sometimes means to be ashamed of it. In Marychase's words, I can find only a feeling like this. As in my home country, Italy, in these years a lot of people try to deny the atrocities of Mussolini's dictatorship, I can see that in Argentina there are people that don't trust the slaughters committed by their military government during the seventies. This movie is poetic, sad, tragic but, I think, is very close to the truth. It's a movie, of course, with a plot, screenplay,...in a movie you can't necessarily see the whole story of a class of students. But what you see in it is something strong, hard and...unbelievable. And that's for some people don't want to believe it. Don't want to accept it. But it was true, sadly... And another shame regarding this movie is that's very hard to find it on DVD!!!

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.

"La noche de los lapices" is one of the best movies Argentina's made, not only because the story behind the movie was one of the worst part of our history, but also because it was for the director a heroic act to release a movie like this on those times.

I strongly beg you to NOT believe marychase's comment about this movie. If you actually WATCH the movie you'll notice that you'll need no "extra" info about that times.

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".