141 min | R | October 21, 2022 | Amazon Studios
A reluctant prosecutor takes on Argentina’s former military dictators in open court. He has no army, no police, and a team of kids nobody else would touch. He builds the case anyway.
Julio Strassera is a career prosecutor in a country still afraid of its generals. The military junta that ran Argentina kidnapped, tortured, and murdered thousands of its own citizens. Now a civilian court wants the men responsible put on trial, and the job lands on Strassera. He cannot trust the senior lawyers, so he assembles a team out of young attorneys with no ties to the old regime. The film is about that trial. It is also about what it takes for an ordinary man to stop flinching and do the thing everyone tells him is impossible.
Ricardo Darín plays Strassera with weariness and dry wit. He is a man who jokes to keep the fear at a distance and knows exactly what the work will cost him. Peter Lanzani plays Luis Moreno Ocampo, the young deputy who comes from a conservative family that backed the military. Lanzani gives him conviction without zeal, a man choosing his country over his class. Alejandra Flechner plays Strassera’s wife Silvia with sharp humor and steady nerve. Norman Briski plays Ruso, the friend who pushes Strassera toward courage when he wants to retreat.
Santiago Mitre directs from a script he writes with Mariano Llinás. He builds the film as a procedural and trusts the process to generate the tension. The courtroom scenes hold on the witnesses as they speak, and the camera refuses to cut away from the testimony. Mitre stages the investigation in cramped offices stacked with files and runs the team against a deadline that keeps the momentum tight. The period detail lives in worn furniture and beige bureaucracy rather than spectacle. The film earns its weight through accumulation, one statement at a time.
The film reaches its peak when the witnesses take the stand. Laura Paredes plays Adriana Calvo, whose account of giving birth in captivity silences the room. These scenes work because Mitre lets them play long and plain, with no music telling you how to feel. Strassera’s closing argument turns the verdict into a statement about who a country decides to be. The film argues that justice is not delivered by heroes but assembled by people who decide the risk is worth it. It makes that case with patience and lets the facts do the damage.