This Silver Bear winner at the 2004 Berlin International Film Festival is set among the world of small time merchants in a Buenos Aires shopping mall. Ariel, a young man in his twenties, is our guide through this community of mostly Jewish business owners struggling to stay afloat. Meanwhile, Ariel attempts to gain Polish citizenship so he can leave the country to become “European.” Torn over whether or not to leave, Ariel's feelings are amplified by his father's abandonment of the family back during the Yom Kippur War when he left for Israel and never returned. Seeking guidance, Ariel consults his mother, brother, grandmother (whose childhood in Poland is the conceit under which he is applying for Polish citizenship) and the other assorted denizens of his multicultural Buenos Aires neighborhood. Lost Embrace is an uplifting example of the prodigious output of Argentinean cinema that has recently taken the film world by storm.

Official Argentinean Submission for the Best Foreign Film Oscar

 

Welcoming Remarks:   Francine Zorn Trachtenberg, President, Washington DCJCC;

His Excellency, José Bordon, Ambassador of Argentina

 

Sponsored by the Hamilton Street Family Foundation

 

Co-sponsored by the Embassy of Argentina