The Eternal Memory   4 stars

From the country of Chile and entered in World Cinema Documentary comes The Eternal Memory,  which documents the life of Augusto, a prominent journalist in Chile who covered events during the Pinochet dictatorship.  Augusto has had Alzheimers disease for several years and is cared for by his wife Pauli. The filmmaker,  Maite Alberdi takes us into their home showing us the struggle for Augusto as he tries to hang on to his identity with his wife’s help.  There is much archival footage from the eighties and later to give us a sense of his work and of the unrest during the Pinochet regime.  We see just how much has been robbed from Augusto by this terrible disease.  He can go for hours unable to recognize his own wife and imagines there are people that will steal his books which he treasures.  But Pauli, who is an actress and still working is there to reassure him and bring him back to reality. The best moments are when she is talking to him about his life and he calmly accepts what she says.  The Eternal Memory won the Grand Jury Prize for World Cinema Documentary.