Alireza Khatami - Los versos del olvido

The elderly caretaker of a remote morgue possesses an impeccable memory for everything but names. He passes his days showing corpses to those searching for their lost ones and tending to his beloved plants. When protest in a nearby city breaks out and the militia covertly raid the morgue to hide civilian casualties, he discovers the body of an unknown young woman. Evoking memories of personal loss, he embarks on a magical odyssey to give her a proper burial with the help of a mystic gravedigger who collects stories of the dead, an old woman searching for her long-lost daughter, and a hearse driver tormented by his past.

Los versos del olvido is inspired by tragic events that are close to my heart. For years I did not have the courage to revisit these memories. It was only after mediating the events through a different language and geography that I could speak of it and understand that historical amnesia prepares the way for violence to be repeated. Los versos del olvido is about the ethical demand to remember the past and resist the violence of forgetting as a form of personal redemption. A reflection on the politics of memory, it is a poetic homage to those who fight to seek justice for the unknown.