A While at the Border

Argentine sisters Julia and Claudia Meirama were promising architecture students at the University of La Plata until in 1977, under the dictatorship, Claudia was kidnapped and tortured, and forced to flee to Sweden. Julia stayed behind in the north of Argentina. For years, they corresponded in an attempt to bridge the distance.

In A While at the Border, their letters are read aloud, providing an intimate insight into what it is like to rebuild a life after surviving a murderous regime. The images consist solely of everyday cityscapes in the two countries: offices, metro corridors, escalators, parks, restaurants, football fields.

The sisters write to each other candidly, not only about love, their studies and their mother, but also about the position of women, rising unemployment and the political situation in Argentina. As the years pass, the letters reveal more and more acutely how the differences in the two countries have real consequences for the sisters, whose lives, to their own sorrow, are becoming increasingly divergent.