Holland-based Alejandro Agresti once again turns his camera eye on his native Argentina's recent past (the desaparecidos, victims of the '70s military junta) and present (the irrepressibility of memory). Where his earlier films (including Love Is a Fat Woman, SFIFF 1988) favored stylistic zeal over plot, in Secret Wedding Agresti anchors his cinematic verve to the story. What he achieves is a deceptively simple tale of great poetic and political resonance. Set in present-day Argentina, the film "begins with a man running naked through the streets of Buenos Aires. He is picked up by the police who discover he's suffering from amnesia. He is unable to remember his name and thinks the year is 1976. Gradually, Fermin begins to piece together parts of his life: he was a bus driver, a union agitator, picked up in 1976 and...killed? Thrown out into the world, he travels to the country to try to find his girlfirend, Tota. He finds himself in a disturbing, at times almost surreal world, where Tota, still waiting for him, can't recognize him, where madness and corruption still permeate the air, and where the Church exercises an oppressive influence. Agresti masterfully balances the emotions of a homecoming with incisive commentary on contemporary Argentina, suggesting in effect that little has changed, that history is indeed cyclical, doomed to repeat itself. As Fermin and Tota try to begin a new life, they are repeatedly pulled back into events of the past." --Piers Handling, Festival of Festivals, Toronto