'Argentina, 1985', a national debate between fiction and memory

More than a million Argentines have gone to theaters since September to see

the film in which Ricardo Darín plays prosecutor Julio César Strassera and his work during the Trial of the Juntas, as the trial and sentence against nine hierarchs of the last military dictatorship (1976-1983).

Directed by Santiago Mitre, the

which can be seen worldwide on Amazon Prime Video, recreates from the prosecution's point of view what was one of the milestones in the South American country's democratic transition.

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'Argentina, 1985': the common man who saved democracy

The rescue of those days now divides Argentine society.

The victims celebrate Miter's film because, they consider, it has brought out of the basement of oblivion a judicial feat without precedent in the world;

The political heirs of President Raúl Alfonsín, promoter of the trial, maintain, on the other hand, that the script does not honor the challenge that it represented for the Government of that time to sit on the bench those who had bled the country dry with torture, murders and more than 30,000 missing.

“I thought the film was fantastic,” sums up Estela de Carlotto, 92, president of the Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo, the organization that for more than four decades has been searching for babies born in the dictatorship's torture rooms.

Carlotto has just seen

along with other referents of human rights and has no doubts.

“I went back to that famous trial that was made when democracy was restored.

It was majestic at the screening when Strassera says 'Never again'.

Memory came back to me and that fight that we still continue stirred up in me.

Many of us are in wheelchairs, very few of us are left, most have already passed away.

But that day was a revelry, we applauded and hugged each other”, says Carlotto.

Carlotto's emotion contrasts with the reading of Alfonsín's heirs.

At the center of the debate is precisely that "Nunca más" that Strassera pronounced on September 18, 1985 at the closing of his final argument, a moment that the film recreates with millimeter fidelity, 11 minutes in which Darín reads the full text.

The prosecutor pronounced before the judges and repressors the name given to the report of the National Commission on the Disappearance of Persons (Conadep), chaired by the writer Ernesto Sabato and created by Alfonsín on December 15, 1983, five days after taking office. office.

The Conadep recorded almost 9,000 cases of human rights violations in 50,000 pages, in a work that later served as an example for other truth commissions around the world.

“Conadep does not appear in the film”,

complained Luis Brandoni, actor and former deputy for the Radical Civic Union (UCR), Alfonsín's party.

"It is shameful and a lack of respect and recognition to all these people who risked their lives and did such an important task, which allowed the trial to be carried out in civil justice," said Brandoni.

Julio César Strassera (on the right, with a mustache), during the Trial of the Boards of the Argentine dictatorship, held in Buenos Aires in 1985.STR (AFP)

The "Never again" was the base from which Strassera

and his team of rookie prosecutors built the case against

Jorge Rafael Videla, Emilio Massera, Eduardo Viola, Armando Lambruschini, Orlando Agosti and four other soldiers.

The script also raised blisters in the family of the then Interior Minister, Antonio Tróccoli, portrayed in

as a high-ranking official against the trial.

“In his capacity as political minister, Dr. Tróccoli signed the decrees that provided for the exemplary trial process that the film reflects.

And he was a creative and active part of Conadep, without whose existence Nunca Más would not have been possible, ”the descendants of the radical politician complained in a statement.

What is at stake is, in any case, the fictional reading of a historical event that also has a good part of its protagonists alive.

Like the president of that court, León Arslanian, represented in the film by actor Carlos Portaluppi.

“We were surprised, because we thought we were not going to appear in the film,” says Arslanián.

The former judge agrees that some "omissions" from the script should have been avoided, such as the recognition of Conadep or the pardons with which President Carlos Menem benefited 12 of the imprisoned military leaders in 1990.

However, he maintains that any criticism is overshadowed by the enormous impact that

,

has had on the collective memory.

“The film has fulfilled an extraordinary role.

It produced a great event in a society that for generational reasons could not be rebuked [by the Trial of the Boards], society was absent until now, ”she points out.

The Argentine writer Ernesto Sabato receives from President Raúl Alfonsín the commission to preside over the newly created Conadep, in 1984.

Arslanián confirms that the sequence in which the judges meet at the Banchero pizzeria, which still exists on Corrientes Avenue, and write down the sentences on a paper napkin did indeed exist.

Also the meeting between the prosecutor and Alfonsín, reflected in the film with a trip late at midnight to an unknown address and a door that closes on camera.

is this country's candidate for the Oscar for best international film, and the Anglo-Saxon specialized media are betting on it as one of the five finalists.

Strassera died in February 2015. What would you have thought about the film?

"I imagine him in disagreement with the presence of his family, but he would have been satisfied with the general balance," says Arslanián.

Why, then, so much debate?

For Judge Alejandro Slokar, president of the Federal Court of Cassation, the highest court in the country below the Supreme Court of Justice, there is little to discuss.

"We must pay attention to the final titles of the film," he warns.

“The film is dedicated to the victims of State terrorism, so that no one should subrogate the role of those who are really the protagonists.

Then the political interpretations of both sides appear, but who is the father of human rights?

Strassera?

Alfonsin?

Politicians and judges comb their hair for the photo because they believe they are the architects of all this."

Among the victims is Buscarita Roa, a Plaza de Mayo grandmother who participated as a witness in those memorable days, held between April and December 1985. Roa told the judges how in 1978 a military truck arrived at her son's house at five o'clock. in the morning and took her daughter-in-law out "with the baby in her arms."

“I told that later came the searches, the trips, the comings and goings to the courts, joining the Mothers of Plaza de Mayo to ask for justice because no one was listening to us,” she says.

And she immediately recalls her reunion with her granddaughter, in 2000, after convincing a 21-year-old woman named Claudia to take a DNA test.

“The film reminded me of the day of the conviction.

We cried, we laughed, we hugged.

It was a great relief because [the military] were sentenced, but very sad because they did not respond,

We didn't know what had happened to our children, where the grandchildren were,” she says.

There was his memory, intact, rescued by what he saw on a screen.