Argentina, 1985 (2022)

There have been several movies over the years about Argentina's Dirty War, with thousands of people kidnapped, tortured, and killed without a trial, a crime, or any record of what happened to them--The Offical Story, The Disappeared, Imagining Argentina to name a few. This is about the reckoning that followed. Julio Strassera is the Argentinian chief prosecutor in charge of the junta trial in 1985--there was no only-following-orders argument: they were ones giving the orders. The event was easily as important as South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation commission 11 years later, although the emphasis was much more toughly on the “truth” part. Nine top military brass were put in the dock for human rights abuses, and this film shows their haughty refusal to recognise the authority of a civilian court and theri efforts to intimidate and threaten those who were witnesses as well as the prosecutors and their families. Leopoldo Galtieri, who had been in charge of the shameful and catastrophic invasion of the Falklands just four years before was in the mix. His presence is not especially remarked upon, but Mitre lets the unspoken anger hover in the air: Argentina’s army was tough enough to torture women and children, but not tough enough to capture las islas Malvinas. The ending is known, but the depiction of how it unfolded it so well done, and a fitting end to this horrible chapter in Argentina's past.