Missing / Missing
1982, 35 mm, Color (16th Festival on Wheels)
Director(s)
Costa Gavras
Country(s)
ABD
Genre(s)
Other
Script
Costa Gavras, Donald Stewart, John Nichols
Photography
Ricardo Aronovich
Editing
Françoise Bonnot
Music
Vangelis
Animation
Cast
Jack Lemmon, Sissy Spacek, Melanie Mayron, John Shea, Charles Cioffi
Production
Edward Lewis, Mildred Lewis
Distribution
BFI Archival Bookings, Fleur Buckley, 21 Stephen Street, London W1T 1LN UK T +44 20 7957 4709 | Fleur.Buckley@bfi.org.uk | www.bfi.org.uk/distribution
Awards
Best Adapted Screenplay Oscar Golden Palm, Best Actor Cannes Best Script, Best Editing BAFTA
Plot
An American freelance journalist, Charles Hormann, is living in a South American state with his
wife Beth when a military coup erupts. A night curfew is imposed, trouble-makers are arrested
and foreigners are hassled, even shot. When Charles goes missing, Beth notifies her father-inlaw,
Ed, who arrives to investigate his son’s disappearance. Being a level-headed conservative
American, Ed initially rejects Beth’s claims that her husband has been abducted for political
reasons. But, as he probes further, it becomes clear that Charles may indeed have been the
victim of a political intrigue – and that American officials may have played in his disappearance...
Missing is political filmmaker extraordinaire Costa-Gavras’s compelling, controversial
dramatization of the search for American filmmaker and journalist Charles Horman, who
mysteriously disappeared during the 1973 coup in Chile. Jack Lemmon and Sissy Spacek give
magnetic, emotionally commanding performances as Charles’s father and wife, who are led
by U.S. embassy and consulate officials through a series of bureaucratic dead-ends before
eventually uncovering the terrifying facts about Charles’s fate and disillusioning truths about
their government. Written and directed with clarity and conscience, the Academy Award–winning
Missing is a testament to Costa-Gavras’s daring.