General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20266 min read

Argentina, 1985

Argentina, 1985 is a 2022 Argentine historical courtroom drama directed by Santiago Mitre, dramatizing the 1985 Trial of the Juntas, in which prosecutors Julio Strassera and Luis Moreno Ocampo brought the leaders of Argentina's military dictatorship before a civilian court. The film runs 140 minutes, is in Spanish, and is a co-production of Argentina and the United States.¹^•² It won the Golden Globe for Best Motion Picture – Non-English Language and was nominated for the Academy Award for Best International Feature Film.³^•⁴

Key fact	Detail
Director and writers	Santiago Mitre; screenplay by Mitre and Mariano Llinás¹
Lead cast	Ricardo Darín as Julio Strassera, Peter Lanzani as Luis Moreno Ocampo⁵
Runtime and language	140 minutes, Spanish¹
Subject	The 1985 Trial of the Juntas against the military dictatorship of 1976–1983²
Major awards	Golden Globe (Best Non-English Language, 2023); Goya (Best Ibero-American Film, 2023); Oscar nominee (Best International Feature); FIPRESCI Prize at Venice³^•⁶^•⁴^•¹
Release	World premiere September 3, 2022 at Venice; Argentine theaters September 29, 2022; Amazon Prime Video globally October 21, 2022⁵
Production companies	Amazon Studios, La Unión de los Ríos, Kenya Films, Infinity Hill; the first-ever Argentine Amazon Original film⁵

Spoilers

Story and approach

The film follows Strassera, a district attorney who reluctantly takes on the prosecution after the judiciary decides the former junta leaders must be retried in civilian court, and his young co-counsel Moreno Ocampo, whose own family had supported the military. Because established lawyers refuse to join for fear or political reasons, they assemble a team of young, inexperienced researchers who collect the eyewitness testimonies that form the basis of the case.¹⁴ The prosecutors worked under constant threats to themselves and their families.²

Structure and tone. Mitre and Llinás built the film as a judicial thriller with a classical courtroom-drama framework, balancing humor, drawn from Strassera's own personality, against the harrowing testimony of torture, kidnapping, and killing that occupies the final third.¹⁴^•¹⁵ Mitre said he chose the prosecutors' perspective so the trial could be narrated for audiences born after 1985, and that the film merges archival footage with recreated testimony.¹⁶^•¹⁷ The research behind the screenplay took about two years and included interviews with journalists, prosecutors, judges, survivors, and witnesses, as well as the trial's published record and audio tapes.¹⁶

The historical subject

The film depicts the Trial of the Juntas, the judicial process held in Buenos Aires between April 22 and December 9, 1985, in which the members of the three first military juntas that governed Argentina during the dictatorship of 1976–1983 were tried for human rights violations.⁷ President Raúl Alfonsín's Decree No. 158/83 ordered the prosecution of nine of the ten officers from the three forces that composed the juntas.⁸ Until that moment there were no judicial precedents of military personnel being judged by civilian courts.⁹

The prosecution's case rested on testimony gathered from victims. Federal prosecutor Julio Strassera presented over 705 cases and called 828 witnesses, drawing on research by CONADEP, the national commission whose report Nunca Más documented the disappearance of over 8,900 people.¹⁰ The verdict was read on December 9, 1985: Jorge Rafael Videla and Emilio Massera were sentenced to life imprisonment, Orlando Ramón Agosti to four years and six months, Roberto Eduardo Viola to 17 years, and Armando Lambruschini to eight years, for crimes against humanity.¹¹^•¹² The trial has been described as the biggest prosecution process for war crimes since the Nuremberg trials of 1946.¹³

Production and filming

Filming began in Buenos Aires in 2021, with much of the shoot in the Palacio de Justicia, the courthouse where the trial took place. The production used the original ground-floor courtroom, today renamed the Salón de los Derechos Humanos, along with the building's stairways, halls, offices, and the surrounding Plaza Lavalle; the prosecution's offices were reproduced in a similar nearby building.¹⁸ The film was shot on the real locations where the action took place.⁵

The crew included cinematographer Javier Juliá, editor Andrés Pepe Estrada, composer Pedro Osuna, and sound designer Santiago Fumagalli.¹ Ricardo Darín, who plays Strassera, was also one of the film's producers.⁵

Release and reception

The film premiered on September 3, 2022 in competition at the 79th Venice International Film Festival, where the audience gave it a seven-minute standing ovation and the FIPRESCI jury awarded it best film.⁵^•¹³^•¹⁵ It screened at the Toronto International Film Festival on September 10, opened in Argentine theaters on September 29, and began streaming on Amazon Prime Video in more than 240 countries and territories on October 21, 2022.⁵ In Spain it was released on September 29, 2022 by A Contracorriente Films, earning €899,265.00 from 157,056 admissions.¹⁹

Awards. At the 80th Golden Globes in January 2023 it won Best Motion Picture – Non-English Language, beating RRR, All Quiet on the Western Front, Close, and Decision to Leave; it was the second Argentine film to win the prize, after Luis Puenzo's La historia oficial (1985).³^•²⁰ It won the Goya for Best Ibero-American Film and the José María Forqué Award for Best Latin American Film, was nominated for the BAFTA for Best Film Not in the English Language, and was nominated for the Academy Award for Best International Feature Film at the 95th Oscars.⁶^•¹⁹^•⁵^•⁴ The National Board of Review gave it its Freedom of Expression Award and named it among its top five international films of 2022.⁴

Historical fidelity

The film opens with a disclaimer that it is inspired by real events, and commentary on its accuracy has been active in Argentina. The journalist Matías Bauso judged that the film narrates in essence, and often in detail, what happened, and that the underlying research by Martín Rodríguez and Federico Scigliano was rigorous, while noting departures such as the diminished presence of President Alfonsín and the omission that Moreno Ocampo could not intervene in hearings until June because Congress had not confirmed his appointment.²¹ The production also reproduced the original television camera positions of the trial, whose images were broadcast at the time as three minutes per day of silent footage.²¹ The complete video record of the real trial, 530 hours recorded on U-Matic cameras, remains a separate archival document whose open access has not been obtained.¹²

References

Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Films and standalone screen works › Individual films by title and year › War and historical films (individual works) › Historical dramas and epics › Titles symbols to L › Titles 1 to Em

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026

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