Iluminados por el fuego (2005)

english movies - adventure / drama / war

Iluminados por el fuego: Blessed By Fire is the story of two young men sent to fight the 1982 war in the Falkland Islands (or as they are known in Argentina, the Malvinas) who return home bearing the brutal scars of war. Twenty years after the war's end, journalist Esteban Leguizamón is informed that Alberto Vargas, one of the men he served with, has attempted to commit suicide after suffering from years of depression brought on by his experiences in the war. Esteban visits the comatose Vargas at the hospital, and in a series of extended flashbacks, revisits the scene of Argentina's "unwinnable war." Esteban and fellow soldiers Vargas and Juan are living in foxholes on the remote, windswept Malvinas, battling hunger, boredom, abuse, and the deprivations of war as they await the arrival of English forces. A series of harrowing battle scenes with English forces ensue, and the Argentines realize the futility and violence of their mission. They're cannon fodder, overwhelmed, outnumbered, pawns in a futile political game. Back in the present, Esteban returns to the Malvinas to come to terms with himself and the past. These emotional final scenes were shot on location in the Malvinas, the first Argentinean film to do so, and as Esteban looks over the still off-limits battlefields filled with mines, live ammunition, and rusting military equipment, the futility of war is abundantly clear. Controversial in its homeland and politically relevant in the U.S, Blessed By Fire is a moving tribute to the veterans of all wars and the psychological burdens they bear.