Contingency, memory and language in Patricio Guzman’s The Pearl Button

The Pearl Button (2015) is a documentary directed by Chilean filmmaker Patricio Guzmán. Throughout the film, the director takes us on a journey along Chilean waters, where the brutality of the countries’ past comes to life with the cyclical movements of this natural resource. In the light of phenomenology, this article analyses the devices that Guzmán uses to bring the elements of the past into the present, providing his audience with a space of remembrance.