Director Cecilia Aldarondo attending
Combining home movies, video, and written documents with contemporary interviews and vérité footage, Memories of a Penitent Heart is a documentary that cracks open a Pandora’s box of unresolved family drama. Originating from filmmaker Cecilia Aldarondo’s suspicion that there was something ugly in her family’s past, the film charts her excavation of the buried family conflict around her uncle Miguel’s death, and her search for Miguel’s partner Robert a generation later.
A story about the mistakes of the past and the second chances of the present, Memories of a Penitent Heart is a cautionary tale about the unresolved conflicts wrought by AIDS, and a nuanced exploration of how faith is used and abused in times of crisis.
Director’s Biography
Cecilia Aldarondo: Cecilia Aldarondo holds an M.A. from Goldsmiths College and a Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota. She is an Assistant Professor of Film Studies at Skidmore College, was the inaugural recipient of the Roberto Guerra Documentary Award in 2015, and has been named by Filmmaker Magazine as one of the 25 New Faces of Independent Film in 2015.