The Gardens of Anuncia takes place in the present, but the memories that visit Older Anuncia as she works in her garden are memories of Buenos Aires, Argentina in the 1940s and 1950s, during the regime of Juan Perón. An army colonel who helped engineer a military coup before becoming president in 1946, Perón remains a polarizing figure in the history of Argentina. His support for workers’ rights won him the support of the nation’s laborers and underprivileged (the descamisados, or “shirtless ones”), but his authoritarian use of the military and governmental power to suppress his critics and to silence dissents eventually led to revolution and his violent overthrow in 1955.

An admirer of Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler, Perón built a cult of personality around himself—using propaganda, mass media, and the spectacle of government-organized rallies—in order to present a heroic, idealized image of Perón as the embodiment of Argentina’s spirit and people. This cult of personality extended to Perón’s beautiful and charismatic wife, the former actress Eva Duarte. Known by her pet name, Evita, she positioned herself as a champion of women and the poor, and she was seen as the spiritual leader of the country before her death from cancer in 1952. All criticism of Perón and his wife was cast as unpatriotic, and any opposition was treated as an attack on the nation itself. The regime relied on an alarmist, us-versus-them mentality to justify violence and the repression of Perón’s adversaries.

Many of those adversaries were artists. Life under Perón was especially difficult for Argentina’s writers, painters, musicians, and intelligentsia. Art became a tool of the regime, and artists who would not put their work toward the glorification of Perón faced steep penalties. Film actors and directors who did not express support for him were forbidden to work. Musicians who would not perform at rallies risked imprisonment. Perón shut down opposition newspapers, fired thousands of university professors and teachers, and persecuted writers like Argentina’s own Jorge Luis Borges. Perón imprisoned Borges’s mother and sister (artist Norah Borges) for speaking against the regime, and his government eventually forced Borges into exile.

How much more extraordinary, then, that the women of The Gardens of Anuncia flourish as artists during this time in Argentina’s history when unrest surrounds them. To support their family, Anuncia’s mother Carmen works as a secretary for the Governor of Buenos Aires, a post that makes her family afraid—for good reason. Anuncia’s Tía Lucia, based on director Graciela Daniele’s own aunt, an accomplished poet and artist, gives Anuncia the gift of a visual imagination that grows out of music and blossoms into stories. And all the women in Anuncia’s life support her choice to pursue a life in the arts, even though it means leaving Argentina behind. However, as The Gardens of Anuncia so eloquently reminds us, nothing and no one we love is ever truly left behind: “There is never a goodbye.”