Blending family memory, archival material, and physically altered film stock, Los Aparecidos explores how political violence enters private life and continues to inhabit the present. Through its use of Film Destroy techniques, the image itself becomes a site of memory, erosion, and historical tension. The film reflects on the enduring importance of political events in shaping civic consciousness, collective memory, and the defense of civil rights.

Los Aparecidos is a documentary essay that revisits the 1968 Tlatelolco massacre through the intimate memories of one family and its close circle. Narrated by the author, the film brings together written testimonies from her parents, grandmother, and friends, whose lives intersected with the events from very different positions: a father training as a military doctor, a mother who sympathized with the student movement, and a grandmother connected to the family of one of the generals involved in the repression.

Creation Process

Los Aparecidos emerged in 2018 as part of M68: The Absent Voices and Everyday Life, an experimental film practice and short-film competition organized by the UNAM Film Archive, the Ingmar Bergman Chair in Film and Theatre, DocsMX, and the Goethe-Institut to mark the fiftieth anniversary of the events of 1968.

The project developed through a workshop with filmmaker Travis Wilkerson, combining family Super 8 footage, written testimonies, and historical 16 mm material provided by the Film Archive.

A central part of the process involved experimenting with Film Destroy techniques: the film stock was scratched, dyed, boiled, chemically altered, and even buried for several weeks, allowing its physical deterioration to inscribe traces of historical violence directly onto the image.

Rather than simply illustrating the repression once again, these interventions sought to interrogate images from the past, disrupting their status as documents and making visible the ways in which historical memory persists, deteriorates, and transforms in the present.

LOS APARECIDOS
Documentary Essay / Experimental Short Film

Year: 2018
Country: Mexico
Duration: 12:26 min
Format: Digital, incorporating intervened 16 mm archival film and family Super 8 footage
Direction: Iliana Pichardo Urrutia & Facundo S. Torrieri
Screenplay: Iliana Pichardo Urrutia
Cinematography: Facundo S. Torrieri
Editing: Facundo S. Torrieri
Sound Design: Facundo S. Torrieri
Subtitles: Astrid Malvido
Production / Creative Collective: Buñuelos Comunidad Creativa
Language: Spanish

AWARDS & SELECTED SCREENINGS
Jury Prize — M68 Experimental Practice and Short Film Contest, Mexico City, 2018
Los Angeles Filmforum — Disarm the Right to Violence!, Los Angeles, 2020
TV UNAM — Broadcast