MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Falklands War horrors portrayed in Argentine film

“Enlightened by Fire”, which opens this week in Buenos Aires is the first major Argentine film to portray the horrors of the ten week 1982 South Atlantic conflict which was fought mainly in the Falkland Islands claimed by Argentina.

Playing on centuries-old nationalist fervor, Argentina's military dictatorship at the time, led by the infamous General Leopoldo Galtieri, went into armed conflict against Britain to reclaim the Falklands in a failed attempt to mask growing criticism of the military regime and the woes of a crumbling economy.

Argentine director Tristan Bauer hopes the film will help Argentines come to grips with a humiliating defeat that also helped topple the dictatorship. Passions still run deep in Argentina over claims to the Falklands, but for most the botched war represents just another brutality committed by a government during whose rule some 30,000 people "disappeared".

"The day after defeat, the Argentine forces had orders to 'de-Malvinize'" said Bauer. "The soldiers who came back had to sign a document that was like a pact of silence. The Malvinas would not be discussed."

One of those soldiers who signed the document was Edgardo Esteban, author of the book that inspired the movie. He was 19 and about to finish his conscription when Argentina took the islands.

Esteban and 9,000 conscripts, or three-quarters of the Argentine forces, had little food and froze in their thin parkas. When caught stealing rations or killing sheep, they were "staked" by their superiors -- spread-eagled and tied to stakes in the ground and left to freeze in the cold rain.

The teenagers also witnessed terrible deaths in the nighttime battles, when the British would pin them to the hillside with incessant bombing and shelling from sea.

"When you are 18, you don't think about death. But ever since this war, death has been with us constantly" said Esteban, now a TV journalist. "Two things help me close this chapter -- the book and now the movie."

The film, which took five years to make and was shot in the Falklands and Argentina, meshes Esteban's experiences and those of other veterans.

It also incorporates news reel images, like those showing thousands of Argentines at the outset of the battles, cheering on Galtieri after he declared war.

The film opens with a veteran's suicide in Buenos Aires several years after the war, leaving the main character, Esteban Leguizamon, the sole survivor of his foxhole group of three. One had died in a battle vividly depicted in the film.

The suicide takes Esteban back to the war in flashbacks and to the present-day Falklands, where he finds his foxhole and belongings he had stashed in the walls.

Some 350 veterans have committed suicide since the war, more than those who died in land battles on the Falklands. Another 370 died when the General Belgrano battleship was torpedoed by a British nuclear submarine.

Argentine movie critic Julia Montesoro said the film should spark a debate about the debt Argentina owes its veterans, most of whom never received decent pensions or assistance for post-combat disorders.

"It is a good movie. It is tough to see, but I think that is necessary" said Montesoro, who reviews films for leading daily La Nacion and Radio Continental.