Five hundred women who were either pregnant or had just given birth disappeared in Argentina after dictator General Jorge Rafael Videla rose to power in 1976.

They were part of 30,000 Argentines who disagreed with the government and were kidnapped and murdered by security forces, known as Los Desaparacidos (“The Disappeared”).

“What the regime would do is wait until the baby was born and kill the mothers,” said filmmaker and Colorado College film and media professor Dylan Nelson. “For many years, nobody knew what happened to the babies. Turned out they had turned the children over to those sympathetic to the regime. In some cases, having folks be raised by people who had been involved with those who murdered their biological family.”

Years later, the grandmothers of these stolen babies began looking for them, pushing to develop forensic biology so there was an index to match the children to their grandparents. They put out calls for people to get tested and matched to their biological families.

“There are still more than 350 children who have never been identified or found,” Nelson said. “It’s a huge part of the Argentine national identity. It’s a story that’s not well-known.”

In Nelson’s new 80-minute documentary, “The Stolen,” she travels to Argentina to interview some of the women and children, who are now adults, at the center of the story. The film will make its Colorado premiere at this year’s Rocky Mountain Women’s Film Festival. It will be screened at 2:30 p.m. Saturday in the Celeste Theatre at Cornerstone Arts Center at Colorado College. Nelson will do a post-film Q&A.

“What resonated is this idea of what if you found out everything you knew about yourself was a lie?” Nelson said. “What would you do? How would you face the world? You have another family. Elemental elements of your identity have been hidden from you by the state. It’s a complex story.”

This year’s longest-running women’s film festival in the U.S. will feature 40 documentary, narrative, short and animated films by and about women. It’s Friday through Sunday at various locations around Colorado College.

“We have excellent programming and it’s consistent,” said the festival’s artistic director Linda Broker. “People have come to expect to see great films and they usually do. People won’t love every film they see, but I like to think overall the collection of films is excellent and it’s an opportunity to see films you don’t otherwise have a chance to see.”

A few of Broker’s film recommendations:

Cry list:

• “Her/Mine” by Alexandra Shiva: A meditation on the life of the filmmaker’s mother, who died from breast cancer when Shiva was 10. While making the film, Shiva was also diagnosed with breast cancer.
• “The Stolen” by Dylan Nelson: After 500 women who were pregnant or had just given birth were disappeared in the mid-1970s during a dictatorship in Argentina, the grandmothers of the lost babies set out to find their family members.

Heartwarmers:

• “Jimmy and the Demons” by Cindy Meehl: A journey into the life of the renowned sculptor James Grashow, who, at 79, spent four years creating his magnum opus, “The Cathedral.”
• “Speak” by Jennifer Tiexiera and Guy Mossman: Five high schoolers spend a year polishing their spoken word performances with the hopes of winning one of the world’s largest public speaking competitions.

Get fired up:

• “The Librarians” by Kim A. Snyder: The issue of banned books and the position librarians have been put in to defend them.

• “The Secret of Me” by Grace Hughes-Hallett: A college student discovers a secret her doctor and parents have kept from her all her life, and unearths a devastating psychological experiment.

A smile, possibly a laugh:

• “Four Mothers” by Darren Thornton: In the feature, a novelist hoping to go on a book tour must entertain his elderly mother and the mothers of three of his friends for a weekend.
• “Through Thin Ice” by Gabrielle Kardon and Arthur Veenema: A woman questions her decision-making process after rescuing her dog, who falls through ice on a frozen lake.