Weaponized ecologies: how cinema addresses nature’s complicity in enforced disappearances

Abstract

Enforced disappearance is a global problem, which has devastated communities on every continent of the world. Sometimes resolved by the eventual discovery and excavation of clandestine graves, more often the meticulous searching for the abducted and denied offers no lasting resolution as the body is never recovered. Due to the global nature of the problem, it has also taken place in every known environmental setting, from familiar places of human habitation to those defined by ecological hostility and impenetrable environmental conditions. This article looks at how cinematic works (including Nostalgia for the Light, The Dupes and El Mar, La Mar) deal with the weaponization of various ecologies in the context of enforced disappearances and how this particular aesthetic register offers insights on material witnessing in the context of mass atrocities.