Marialuisa Ernst’s heartbreaking and inspiring documentary “A Place of Absence” follows her and the Caravan of Mothers, women who have relatives who were disappeared by dictatorial regimes in Central America, on a 2500 mile quest to find them (or their remains). It is showing at DOC NYC as part of its “Resilience” showcase. Go here for showtimes and ticket information.

Marialuisa’s uncle Guillermo was disappeared during Argentina’s Dirty War. (Between 1974 and 1983 it is estimated that between 22,000 and 30,000 political activists were either killed or disappeared by the military junta.) All Marialuisa, who has since moved to New York state, has to remember her uncle with are a few photographs and a cassette tape of him singing and playing a guitar. She accompanies the Caravan of Mothers of Missing Migrants as they travel the migrant trail through Mexico with photographs of their missing loved ones, visiting shelters, brothels, asking for tips and confronting government officials who–in one case–refuse to allow exhumation of a parcel of land identified as the mass grave of possibly 200 victims.

Besides Marialuisa, the film focuses on two other Caravan mothers: Anita, whose son disappeared sixteen years ago and Leti, who hasn’t seen her daughter Merza for fourteen years. Miraculously, Merza is found and appears healthy (physically, at least) after years of abduction. Leaving in a car with her daughter, Leti tells her not to talk to her now about all the unsavory things she must have had to suffer through–there will be plenty of time for that later.

Marialuisa’s mother escaped harm herself during the Dirty War by going to Chile for her continued medical training. She explains to her daughter that she has a different response to grief. She learned how to compartmentalize the suffering the same way she never took the anguish of treating cancer patients at work home with her. The filmmaker talks about different strategies for dealing with loss, pointing out the loss of a disappeared love one is especially difficult as you are simultaneously mourning a loved one but also hoping they may be still alive.

Ernst has a background in performance and installation art and she punctuates the documentary with gorgeous lyrical, poetic sequences: animated portraits of the three mothers surrounded by autumn leaves, collages of photos of Guillermo in flames, and other rituals created as part of the mourning process.

There have been many films made about the desaparecidos. “A Place of Absence” is both one of the most despairing and yet hopeful I have seen. It is also highly relevant to the war on immigrants going on under the Trump administration now. Migrants, including U.S. citizens and other people legally here are being disappeared every day now, swept up sometimes based just on the color of their skin or the language they speak, and things seem to be getting worse. And many of the Central and South American dictatorships were aided by U.S. funding and weapons and using intel and assassins hired by the C.I.A.

In one of the most powerful scenes of the film, the body of Guillermo has been found. His sister looks at the forensic arrangement of his bones and fragments of his clothing. She feels the cloth, puts her hand over the bones of one of his hands. They later cremate him outdoors in a personal ceremony and then bury his ashes beneath a Ceibo tree fulfilling his wish to become a seed that would turn into a tree. Let’s hope that “A Place of Absence” is one of the many seeds that will propagate a huge movement for justice and closure for the friends and families of the desaparecidos.