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.
