“The Greek word for return is ‘nostos’. ‘Algos’ means suffering.

So nostalgia is the suffering caused by an unappeased yearning to return.”

(Ignorance, Milan Kundera).

September 11th of the year 1973 the history of Chile changed. The coup d’état headed by General Augusto Pinochet gave way to a military dictatorship that lasted for almost twenty years. Crimes, tortures and murders directed to those against the regime were common, a curfew was instated and thousands of Chileans had to leave their country.

Entre nosotros (Between Us), by Paloma Aguilera takes place in a farewell party, among family and friends. Diego has arrived from Chile to Amsterdam with his son to visit his brother, whom he hasn’t seen since his brother was exiled in the 80s. Surrounded by guitar music and cold beers, nostalgia and culpability bloom among the old songs and the wounded past of a country that rejected artists, freethinkers and intellectuals. One of these artists was Gabriel Aguilera, the father of this film maker, a musician that immigrated to Holland fleeing from the Chilean dictatorship in 1979.

As homage, Paloma Aguilera rebuilds one of those meetings in which both worlds, the one you abandon and the one that receives you, blend into a nostalgic farewell evening. Aguilera, in a recent interview, confesses that she wanted to direct a documentary but, after a trip to Chile to visit family “all those emotions arose and I realized how difficult farewells are. You belong to a place but you no longer belong to it. You have to return home, which is only partially your home”. This is how this fictional film was born, where the Dogma movement influence is visible, united with the simplicity and emotion typically found in the last decade’s South American film making. Aguilera invites the audience to participate in this private meeting and she approaches with tenderness a piece of history that has almost been forgotten, intending to awake the collective memory.

Paloma Aguilera was born in Amsterdam and studied interpretation in Paris. In 2005 she returned to her birth town to study Direction in the Dutch Film Aacademy. She graduated with the short film Blijf bij me, weg that was awarded several prizes in international festivals. Entre nosotros has received the FIPA in Biarritz and has been nominated as best international debut film at the Dutch Film Festival.

Entre nosotros has been chosen for the Official Section of the International Half-Length Film Festival La Cabina, that will be taking place in Valencia this coming November.