‘The Eternal Memory’ First Look: Poignant Love Story From MTV Documentary Films And Oscar-Nominated Director Maite Alberdi

EXCLUSIVE: In the award-winning documentary The Eternal Memory, Paulina Urrutia reintroduces herself to her husband, the Chilean writer and television presenter Augusto Góngora, who knows her and yet doesn’t know her, as a result of his Alzheimer’s. 

“I’m Augusto. And who are you?” smiling, he asks his wife. She responds gently, “I’m Pauli. We’ve known each other for over 20 years.”

Oscar-nominated filmmaker Maite Alberdi (The Mole Agent) directed the tender love story, winner of the Grand Jury Prize for World Cinema Documentary at the Sundance Film Festival. We have your first look at the film in teaser-trailer above.

MTV Documentary Films is releasing the documentary theatrically in New York on August 11 and Los Angeles on August 18, with a limited national rollout to follow. In addition to Sundance, The Eternal Memory screened at the Berlin Film Festival, CPH:DOX in Copenhagen, Hot Docs in Toronto and DovAviv in Tel Aviv. On Friday, it will play as part of this year’s HamptonsFilm SummerDocs series, and on Saturday the film screens at DC DOX.

“The Eternal Memory tells a profound and moving love story that balances vibrant individual and collective remembrance with the longevity of an unbreakable human bond,” notes a synopsis of the film. “Augusto and Paulina have been together and in love for 25 years. Eight years ago, their lives were forever changed by Augusto’s Alzheimer’s diagnosis. As one of Chile’s most prominent cultural commentators and television presenters, Augusto is no stranger to building an archive of memory. Now he turns that work to his own life, trying to hold on to his identity with the help of his beloved Paulina, whose own pre-eminence as a famous actress and Chilean Minister of Culture predates her ceaselessly inventive manner of engaging with her husband. Day by day, the couple face this challenge head-on, relying on the tender affection and sense of humor shared between them that remains, remarkably, fully intact.”

The film is produced by Maite Alberdi, Juan De Dios Larraín, Pablo Larraín, and Rocío Jadue. Executive producers are Marcela Santibañez, Daniela Sandoval, Nicholas Hooper, Julie Goldman, Christopher Clements, Chandra Jessee and Rebecca Lichtenfeld.

Góngora co-wrote the 1989 book Chile: La Memoria Prohibida (Chile: The Forbidden Memory), a work of nonfiction that documented the human rights abuse of his country’s military dictatorship under Gen. Augusto Pinochet. After the end of Pinochet’s regime, he helped restore Chile’s cultural vitality that had been decimated under the dictator. His wife Pauli is an acclaimed actress and served as Chile’s first Minister of Culture.

In a recent interview, Alberdi told Deadline that Góngora did not hesitate to publicly reveal his Alzheimer’s diagnosis.

“He understood so deeply that his role was to communicate, and he was very conscious of that,” Alberdi said. “He was like, ‘I have to tell everybody because I always showed the life of others [through reportage], so I’m going to show my own life…’ He never had any doubts about me making the film. He knew that he was in not good condition, and he said bravely ‘I’m not embarrassed. I have to show my problems.’ And he told Paulina, ‘I need to show what I’m living. This is my new battle of communication.’”

Watch the teaser-trailer for The Eternal Memory above.