Time Suspended

Director Natalia Bruschtein’s 86-year-old grandmother Laura Bonaparte used to know the difference between right and wrong. She was an outspoken political activist against the military junta that ruled Argentina from 1976 to 1983. Now, she has Alzheimer’s and is bedridden in a nursing home. One moment, she’s full of praise for the nurse who brings her milk and cake; the next, she’s complaining that the same nurse is mean and never gives her anything good to eat. She no longer recognizes members of her own family, and she has even forgotten that her husband and children were kidnapped by the dictatorial regime, never to return. In that respect, her disease is a blessing. This is a tribute to a courageous woman, who for many years was one of the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo protesting in Buenos Aires, holding up photos of her “disappeared” children. In archive footage Laura lucidly tells her story, explaining how she fled to Mexico, only to hear from neighbors back home that her daughter had been taken by the military police while breastfeeding her newborn. While Laura looks on, enchanted, as children blow out candles – it’s her birthday; they are her own great-grandchildren – letters and clippings tell the story she has now forgotten.