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Oscar documentary branch voters can’t be accused of parochialism. They ventured far and wide to select their shortlist of feature documentaries for 2023, tapping films from countries as varied as a U.N. roll call: Ukraine, Uganda, Poland, Denmark, Tunisia, Canada and the United States.

To Kill a Tiger, one of the 15 finalists, unfolds in a village in the Indian state of Jharkhand. Nisha Pahuja, who was born in India and raised in Canada, directed the film about a humble couple who fight for justice after their 13-year-old daughter is sexually assaulted by three men. Before the shortlist was announced, Pahuja wondered whether doc branch members would embrace her documentary. “It’s a Canadian film, but it’s an Indian story,” she said, “and it’s subtitled.”

Pahuja needn’t have worried. Neither subtitles nor remote settings deter today’s documentary branch, whose membership is far less insular than it used to be.

The critically-acclaimed documentary feature “The Eternal Memory” is returning to theaters, Variety has learned exclusively.

The doc, which hails from MTV Documentary Films, will be back on theater screens in New York and Los Angeles starting today. The film will screen daily at The IFC Center in New York on Jan. 5-7 and 12-15. It will screen at the Laemmle Glendale and Monica Film Center in Los Angeles on Jan. 6- 8 and 13- 15.

The film originally premiered at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival, where it won the Grand Jury Prize World Cinema – Documentary. It went on to win several more accolades on the festival circuit and was named to the to the shortlist in the Best Documentary Feature Film category for the 96th Academy Awards.

“The Eternal Memory” previously ran in theaters nationwide and debuted on Paramount+ in the U.S. in November.

The film tells the story of Augusto Góngora and Paulina Urrutia,...

The Augusto Pinochet regime, which ruled Chile under an oppressive thumb with unspeakable human rights violations from 1973 to 1990, following the coup d’état that ousted Socialist president Salvador Allende, has been the subject of countless screen dramas. That includes a loose trilogy by Pablo Larraín, comprised of Tony Manero, Post Mortem and No, all of which observed the dictatorship from unique angles. But even by the director’s own distinctive standards, his return to the subject is a wild leap into irreverent originality, reimagining the deposed tyrant as a 250-year-old vampire on the verge of relinquishing eternal life.

Shot in ravishingly textured, crepuscular black and white by the great Ed Lachman, the Netflix film (opening Sept. 8 in theaters before streaming from Sept. 15) is as visually intoxicating and atmospheric as it is provocative, liberally mixing political satire with dark comedy and horror while examining a grim history that seems doomed to keep repeating itself.

Providing a masterclass in empathy, Chilean documentarian Maite Alberdi lends a certain whimsy to her works that forage hope amidst roving sadness. She manages to extract each ounce of charm from her subjects and, as in her study of aging and isolation in Oscar-nominated “The Mole Agent,” she continues to showcase a zest for life in the protagonists in her latest feature.

“The Eternal Memory,” her follow-up to “The Mole Agent,” was the subject of double news on Friday, walking off with the World Cinema Grand Jury Prize: Documentary – the section’s top plaudit – just hours after MTV Documentary Films acquired worldwide rights to the doc feature.

follows former Chilean journalist Augusto Góngora and his wife, actress Paulina Urrutia, in their rigorous fight against Augusto’s memory-zapping diagnosis.

Tender and sentimental, scenes oscillate between the torture of a fast-fading history and divine moments of immense love as they navigate the...