Nostalgia for the Light ending explained

What happens

The film ends by joining its two searches. The telescopes can read the distant past in the sky, but they cannot look down at the desert floor, where the disappeared still lie. The film wishes they could.

The last image

The film closes on the Atacama's night sky above the ground where the women keep searching.

What it says

The ending asks you to treat remembering as a duty, not a mood. Starlight and buried bones both arrive from the past, and both can be recovered. The film ends with hope because the search, however slow, is still going on.