VENICE, Italy —
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.
اضافة اعلان
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.
The film traces the prosecutors as they take on the
uphill challenge of putting the military ringleaders on trial, relying on an
energetic team of idealistic novices while facing intimidation and threats.
“This story touched me deeply and gave me the desire
to make a film about justice ... based on facts that really happened,” said
Mitre.
The film, in which moments of droll humor interrupt
its more serious subject matter, is at its most moving when witnesses take the
stand, one by one, to testify to the horrors they suffered in secret torture
centers across Argentina.
Among the most atrocious, one woman testifies how
she was forced to give birth handcuffed and blindfolded in the car of her
torturers, her baby tumbling to the car’s floor after delivery.
Some 400 babies were born in captivity and illegally
handed over to others, according to the rights organization Grandmothers of
Plaza de Mayo.
Since the resumption of the dictatorship’s trials in
the mid-2000s — after more than a decade of amnesty laws and other
controversial measures — some 1,060 people have been convicted of crimes
against humanity.
Most recently in July, the Argentine judiciary sentenced 10
former military and police officers to life imprisonment for homicide,
kidnapping, torture, and rape.
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