Venice Film Festival competition title Argentina, 1985, about a group of lawyers who risk everything when they take on the country’s military dictatorship, “has massive relevance to the rest of the world” according to its star Ricardo Darin.
The film co-stars Peter Lanzani and was directed by Santiago Mitre, a Cannes Critics’ Week winner in 2015 with Paulina (La Patota).
Based on the real-life legal proceedings that mark the first time a civil tribunal successfully issued judgement on military crimes, it follows a team of Argentine prosecutors tasked with the complex mission of trying the former military regime, ousted in 1983.
It’s estimated some 30,000 people simply disappeared under the 1976-1983 military rule in Argentina, many of which are still unaccounted for. Survivors of military abductions testified in the real-life trial of torture, rape and internment camps.
Darin, also a producer on the film through his company Kenya Films, said of the project: “This was the most important trial of Argentine history, but it has massive relevance to the rest of the world. It resonates with contemporary society, and looks closely at future generations, at our need to move forward with justice and accountability as a form of universal message.”
“In the fragility of universal democracy today, there is no better moment for this film to have come. Violence doesn’t lead to any, any, any, any good whatsoever,” said Vitoria Alonso, one of the producers.
Argentines that lived through the bloody years “can try and ignore them, pretend they didn’t happen. But the problem is that it is part of us. What we want through, the violence we lived through will never be removed. You are never going to eradicate the reality of 30,000 people that disappeared. You cannot eradicate death,” she added.
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