Nostalgia for the Light (2010) on Netflix

Plot summary

The narrator recalls falling in love with astronomy as a boy, when Chile's clear skies drew scientists from around the world. He walks the Atacama Desert, so dry that it preserves fish, mollusks, carvings and mummified human remains, and lets astronomers and archeologists read the past in what it holds. Astronomer Gaspar Galaz describes looking into the cosmos as a way of studying origins; archeologist Lautaro Núñez compares his own work to that search. The desert also keeps traces of Chile's recent history. Survivors of the Chacabuco concentration camp, Luís Henríquez and Miguel Lawner, describe how prisoners studied the constellations at night and how Miguel measured and drew the camp's layout by foot. Women still comb the sand for the remains of relatives who disappeared under Pinochet's regime.