La hija indigna
2018 · 14m · Argentina
Directed by Abril Victoria Dores
Genres: biography, documentary, drama
Tones: contemplative, dark, melancholic
A harrowing creative documentary based on real events about the relationship between a genocidal father and his daughter: an inquiry into family bonds and the deep emotions that tie us to people we do not always consider worthy of our love.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
Most people would expect a film about a genocidal father to be a straightforward moral autopsy, but Dores resists that—she keeps asking the uncomfortable question nobody wants answered, which is exactly why it works.
The formal restraint here is almost classical: a documentary that refuses sentimentality while interrogating the apparatus of family itself, situating personal testimony within the weight of historical atrocity with remarkable precision.
What makes this land is the decision to let silence and negative space do the emotional work instead of reaching for the expected catharsis—one moment of withheld revelation carries more weight than a dozen confessions could.