Film about Nazi doctor is Argentina's Oscar bid

Movie depicts a family that unwittingly befriends the fugitive ‘Angel of Death’

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina — Argentina’s film academy announced Friday that its bid for this year’s best foreign film at the Oscars is “Wakolda,” a movie mixing fact and fiction about Nazi war criminal Josef Mengele.

Written and directed by Lucia Puenzo, the film depicts a family that unwittingly befriends the fugitive death camp doctor and even allows him to give hormone treatments behind closed doors to their under-sized daughter.

“The film deals with a very uncomfortable issue, which is complicity, or a certain sympathy that some Nazis encountered on this side of the world when they fled Europe,” Puenzo said earlier this month. “Regarding the history of Mengele in particular, there are many conjectures and many myths, but there’s also very solid information about his time in the Southern Cone. For example, in Buenos Aires, Mengele even appeared in the telephone directory.”

The film stars Diego Peretti, Elena Roger and Florencia Bado of Argentina, Natalia Oreiro of Uruguay and Alex Brendemühl of Spain.

Six Argentine films have been nominated for best foreign film at the Academy Awards, and two have won the Oscar: “The Official Story” in 1985, which was directed by Puenzo’s father Luis Puenzo, and “The Secret of His Eyes” in 2009.