When Dee's daughter, Corrie, decides to spend her gap year in Buenos Aires, Argentina, it seems like the perfect solution for a mother-daughter relationship that has been suffocating under the strain of grief. That is, until Corrie's host family contact Dee unexpectedly, concerned that Corrie hasn't returned from a short trip and may not be safe. With worst case scenarios flashing through her mind, Dee immediately boards a plane from Australia, and starts the process of officially reporting her daughter as missing. Five years later, the search is still going, with Dee making an annual pilgrimage to Buenos Aires, desperate for a clue, a hint, a lead...anything at all that will reveal her daughter's fate. On her fifth visit, as Dee is preparing herself to finally start letting go, a chance sighting of someone resembling Corrie in a photograph sparks the biggest sign of hope that Dee has had in years. Traces of Absence is a stirring and thoughtful portrayal of parenthood, faith, guilt and one mother's contemplation of how long to keep searching for a lost child.