Lost City Radio is a taut and emotionally raw story of the human consequences of war, during and after a protracted guerilla insurgency in an unnamed Latin American country. A radio announcer in the capital, Norma has quite literally become the voice of hope for a deeply scarred nation that refuses to put the horrific legacy of war behind it. Every Sunday night, her program, Lost City Radio, broadcasts the names of some of the hundreds of thousands who disappeared during the long conflict, both to help reunite families and, more often, to keep the memories of departed alive. For her efforts, Norma has become a de facto mother to the nation, a disembodied voice of consolation that reaches even villages in the deepest jungle.
In one such village, renamed 1797 by the new government, a young boy has been orphaned after his mother drowns in the river. The villagers decide that young Victor, now freed from any familial ties, should be sent to the city to deliver the list of their missing to Norma for broadcast. When Norma sees the name of Victor’s village, she is enveloped by her own long-suppressed sense of loss, for 1797 is the place where her dissident husband, Rey, was last seen alive.
