Argentina's 'Dirty War' trial on screen at Venice
Issued on: 03/09/2022 - 19:04
AFP
1 min
Venice (AFP) – Argentine director Santiago Mitre still has vivid memories of the 1985 trial that put the country's repressive military junta on the stand for the disappearances of tens of thousands of citizens.
That historic episode -- and the success of Prosecutor Julio Strassera in winning guilty verdicts for many of those responsible -- is now the subject of Mitre's latest film that premiered at the Venice Film Festival Saturday, "Argentina, 1985".
"I still remember the day Strassera read his indictment: the commotion in the courtroom, the emotion of my parents, the streets finally able to celebrate something that wasn't a soccer game, the idea of justice as an act of healing," said Mitre.
An estimated 30,000 people disappeared during the 1976-1983 military dictatorship, whose "Dirty War" against opponents unleashed a wave of kidnappings, torture, rapes and murder.
More:
https://www.rfi.fr/en/people-and-entertainment/20220903-argentina-s-dirty-war-trial-on-screen-at-venice
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‘Argentina, 1985’ Film Review: Advocates and Activists Fight to Reveal the Nation’s Painful Past
Venice Film Festival 2022: Santiago Mitre doesn’t rewrite the historical drama, but his courtroom procedural on the Trial of the Juntas is an effective crowd-pleaser
Carlos Aguilar | September 3, 2022 @ 9:45 AM
Prime Video
Near the rousing climax of Santiago Mitre’s courtroom procedural “Argentina, 1985,” making its world premiere at the Venice Film Festival, an affecting phone call between a mother and a son shines as an ideological lighthouse, offering the promise that people’s long-held beliefs can evolve for the better. And if one individual can change, then an entire society can reevaluate its faults to amend them.
This impeccably executed portrait of a country at a crossroads chronicles at length the Trial of the Juntas, a nearly unthinkable opportunity in the mid-1980s for the first government of Argentina’s embryonic democracy to try nine generals and admirals (including dictator Jorge Rafael Videla) for crimes against humanity committed during the military dictatorship in a civil court of law.
Tasked with the titanic task of bringing justice to the thousands of Argentines whose lives were undone or lost at the hands of these ruthless, once-powerful men, prosecutor Julio Strassera (Ricardo Darín) reluctantly accepts the help of a much younger lawyer, Luis Moreno Ocampo (Peter Lanzani), amid death threats and other intimidation tactics.
Lanzani, previously seen in “The Clan,” brings a wide-eye hopefulness as Moreno Ocampo, a character whose military family has turned their back on him, appalled that he would betray their conservative worldview. Their reaction exemplifies the challenge the prosecutors had in rallying public support in a country where many of the wrongdoers were hiding in plain sight, holding jobs in all walks of life, taking their impunity for granted.
More:
https://www.thewrap.com/argentina-1985-movie-review-santiago-mitre-trial-juntas-amazon-prime/