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Alison: This is All Of It on WNYC. I'm Alison Stewart. An Oscar-nominated film is an account of the court case known as the Trial of the Hunters. It's titled Argentina, 1985. The film won a Golden Globe for best foreign language film and is up for the Academy Award for best international feature. It's a fictionalized account of the real- life prosecutors, Julio Cesar Strassera, excuse me, and Luis Moreno Ocampo, as they figure out how to hold a group of high-ranking military officials accountable for atrocities committed during the dictatorship that lasted from 1976 to 1983, whose methods included torture, murder, and the disappearance of an estimated 30,000 people, mostly civilians.

With a corrupted system and people scared to speak, in 1985, the prosecution turns to a very young, very green set of attorneys to build a case and seek justice for the people who suffered and lost their lives. Today, the director and screenwriter of Argentina, 1985, Santiago Mitre, joins us to discuss the film. Hi, Santiago.

Julio: Hello, Alison.

Alison: Also, here is the true lawyer, the real-life lawyer who served as assistant prosecutor in the trial of the Hunters, Luis Moreno Ocampo. Luis, welcome.

Luis: Thank you. Delighted to be here.

Alison: Santiago, why did you want to make a film about this period?

Julio: Because I thought it was an important film to bring back to life to this 2023. It's a magnific event on how my country deal with transition to democracy, seating to trial to this military only one year after dictatorship ended and see I thought it was a great event that took a lot of bravery and it was a good image for democracies, for this period that we are living.

Alison: Luis, the film takes place after the dictatorship ended, as Santiago said, and Argentina's government is emerging. How did people feel about the direction of the nation at that time?

Luis: Well, the film shows to the families, how the people feel. The Strassera family were a normal family. They want justice, but they were afraid of the government. My family was an army family. My grandfather was a general and my uncle a colonel so they were fury who lift them, they were fury with the trial. The big themes are portrayed by the [unintelligible 00:02:47] show the impact of the illegal activities on the normal people. A woman gave birth in the seat of the police car handcuffed and her eyes covered. That emerges from the country, and now through the movie, through the film, as informing the new generations.

Alison: Santiago, I'm glad Luis brought up that part of the story. In the film, we see the trial and people are describing some of the horrible things that happened, this woman who gives birth in the seat of the car with a blanket over her head and is unable to be with her child. Someone describes having enough electricity in his body that he couldn't drink water. You made the choice to just let the stories tell themselves. There's no cutaway to a shot of something, even if it would be artistic. What went into that decision to just let the words tell the story?

Julio: I think that those experiences are-- it was impossible to shoot them. What one person suffer in that situation, you can only listen to her or to him and try to understand him, but not to portray that situation. It will be too much imagination. I thought to leave it-- to try to imagine through her suffering and through the way she was talking, it was a lot more powerful.

Alison: There is some real footage of the events of the court trial and some photos used in the film. Santiago, if you could tell us a little bit about the systems you set up, the guidelines you and your cinematographer, Javier Julia developed for incorporating that footage in the film.

Julio: Some of the things that we did during the writing of the script, all the words that are said in the public hearings by the witnesses and some of the interventions of the prosecutors and lawyers are verbatim. We did not want to change any word of what the witnesses say. Also in the final speech of Strassera, of course, it's edited, but the words are the same that he used in the closing speech. Then we used a lot of the-- some of the shots of the actual trial from the '85. The trial was completely typed. During the shooting, we always had a pneumatic camera, which is the same camera that was used during the trial, building a fake archive with this pneumatic camera. In the editing, we could mix our shots with the fake archive we're producing, and then go back to the '85 trial.

It was important for me because I wanted to be super accurate and super precise and so that people realize when they see the film that this was a reconstruction, but we're trying to be the more non-fiction reconstruction as possible. We were able to shoot in the real courtroom so that was something that also bring something very powerful to the images.

Alison: And authentic to the images as well. Luis, let's see-- I want to find out if this is true, if this actually happened. In the film, Strassera who's the lead doesn't get your name right, at least that's the way it's written in the movie because he's not that sure about you. One, did that happen? Two, was he not that sure about you at first?

Luis: No, no, that's part of the imagination. But it’s fine. I think what as Santiago explained, what happened in court is verbatim, the key [unintelligible 00:06:51], but then he used imagination to make some humor in particular. It's like a joke. Strassera ignoring me is a joke, he include to include humor. What is important in this movie is two things, I would say. One, you can laugh. It's a tragic story and you can laugh all the time. It's a dramatic story with laughing moments and that is the creativity of Santiago.

Also, the movie shows the young people coming, the young people helping to do justice. That I think is the most powerful message that Santiago is giving, is young people doing the trial and young people today, not just in Argentina, in the world are inspired. Argentina, 1985 is about young people fighting for democracy in the world in 2023. It's about democracy in '23 in the world.

Alison: Santiago, we learn in the film that the team realizes-- actually, it's Luis' character who realizes we have to bring in young lawyers, we have to bring in people who aren't corrupted by the system. There's this funny scene where they're being interviewed about their political affiliations, about how they feel about things. One guy is like, "I just want to tell you about this band I like, Los Hojuelas.” What went into writing that scene and what did you want the viewer to take away from it?

Julio: As Luis said before, there were some moments where we were wanting to play this humorous situation, and that was one of them. We were using this character that is a real character, Carlos Orellana, who was a theater director. So he's doing a casting in a theater way, making questions, which some of them have sense and some no, just to understand who they are and to try to bring him to the team. That was one of the scenes where we allowed ourself to play a little bit with a genre on how to build the accurate team to make this trial.

For me, as said Luis said before, it was very important to talk to the newer generations. I think my turning point during the research was when I realized that they teamed with this 20-year-old lawyers, or not even lawyers in some case. I thought that was the political image that could make the film relevant these days to bring to Argentina these days and to the world. These days where we see so many young people that they’re seen to be a little bit fed up with democracy or they’re too used to living in a democracy, and they don't realize how important and how difficult it was to go back to democracy and to consolidate it.

Alison: We are talking about the film, Argentina, 1985. It is up for the Academy Award for best international feature. I'm speaking with its writer and director, Santiago Mitre and Luis Moreno Ocampo. He is one of the real-life lawyers that is in part of this story. We've talked about the humor and we've talked about the setting a little bit. But Luis, there's clearly a sense of danger and that people are frightened to be a part of this prosecution, frightened to even be around it, frightened to testify. If you could describe the intensity of that moment, how you felt about it, how did you get through the intensity of that moment?

Luis: Well, when Strassera offered me the position, I could not resist. I had to do it, but I was thinking, “Okay, I have to rationalize this because I could be killed.” Then my thinking was, “Okay, while democracy, I would not be killed and if there is a new coup d'état, I had to leave the country. That's it. That's very clear.” For me, the heroes-- because I was the deputy prosecutor, I had an official position. The heroes and those who really exposed themselves are the witness because they present their stories telling what the police or the army did against them and facing everyone.

That is, for me, the movie is great to allowing the film to show the bravery of the witness and we were able to transform the sad testimonies into evidence to convict the dictators. Now Santiago took the same testimonies and transformed them into beautiful a film to spread around the world the cost of freedom and protection of rights and justice.

Alison: Santiago, clearly you did a lot of research for the film, as you mentioned, you shot in the original courtroom. What was a detail or something from your research you knew you had to include, that it was really, really important that that detail make it into the film?

Santiago: I think that probably the bravery that took for every person that participated on the trial, that the bravery of the president, of doing the building the context for the trial and then the bravery of the judges on saying, “We are going to do this trial and we have to do it now.” Then also about how frightening can be the situation, but also how important it was for the prosecutors and for the witnesses. I think for the context, we need to understand, but we understand when you see the film, militaries were still super powerful at the moment. All the region was still governed by military dictatorships. Most of the people who ran the repressed system were free. The people who kidnapped torture, murder, disappeared, were on the streets.

It was like you need a lot of bravery to sit there and give testimony and to sit there and accuse the militaries and then to bring accountability for the judges. That was, I think, one of the things that I understood. Because now, four years after this ended, you can think, “Okay, yes, well, the trial needed to be done,” but only one year after, it took a lot of guts, I think.

Alison: Luis, what do you want people to never forget about that moment?

Luis: That it is possible. Whatever happened today in Ukraine, whatever happened in US during January 6th, or in Brazil, we have to keep understanding the law provides equality. The fight for Afro-American, for gender, for [unintelligible 00:13:31], it's a fight for equality, for justice. That why this movie is called Argentina, 1985, but it should be called World 2023 because it's about democracy and the fight for equality in the world in 2023. It's about today.

That is why what I impress is I wrote books, you said 20 cents a books. Santiago Mitre film was watched by in one month for 1 million people just like Argentina in the theaters. Now Amazon multiplied for 10 and the Oscar is provided could multiply for 20. That's why I like this idea to discuss, use the films to discuss our life, our life in Argentina, in Brazil, in Washington, in the world.

Alison: The name of the film is Argentina, 1985. I recommend you watch it. The name of the film is Argentina, 1985. My guests have been Luis Moreno Ocampo and Santiago Mitre, its co-writer and directors. Thank you for the time today.

Luis: Thank you.

Santiago: Thank you.

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