Awards Daily: First things first, congratulations on your Oscar nomination for Argentina, 1985!
Santiago Mitre: Thank you very much. I’m very happy!
AD: Were you watching the nomination announcement?
SM: I was watching, of course, yes. I was very anxious and nervous about everything. [Laughs]. I was visiting my family’s holiday house outside Argentina in the mountains, which is a beautiful place to be.
That morning in Argentina, it was raining a lot, so I ran out of internet. And the only way to have some signal on my phone was to climb a small mountain beside the house. And I was sitting there with my phone in the middle of the rain, watching the announcement of the nominations, very nervous. It was a very bizarre image. I shouted a lot, and I was very happy, of course. And I got wet a lot too. It’s great!
AD: What was more exciting for you, the World Cup win or the Oscar nomination?
SM: Uh…do I have to be honest?
AD: Yes! [Laughs].
SM: World Cup.
AD: Yes, I was rooting for Messi the whole time!
SM: I mean, it was like the best football match in history, I think, and it was played by people from my country. Watching that dream come true was one of the more intense experiences of my life.
AD: So, I have to ask you, justice is a central theme that recurs in many of your films. Why is that something you’re so drawn to, and how did that bring you to Argentina, 1985?
SM: I mean, I think that besides football, the main passion of Argentina is politics.
My family is very rooted in politics. Everyone has been working in politics for many generations. I’m the only one who could avoid it. But then cinema brought me back to it. So, it’s something that you cannot escape easily.
I’ve been doing political films, and I really wanted to work on this precise subject, justice and democracy, and about this precise event, the trial of ’85. The trial was important and significant for the reconstruction of democracy after the awfulness of the dictatorship. And I think it’s so relevant, not only for Argentinian history but for current times, as we are seeing a rise in anti-democratic speech all over the world. Things like what happened in the U.S. not long ago with the January 6 [insurrection] and what happened in Brazil [the election of far-right candidate Jair Bolsonaro] not long ago. We need to go back and talk about the importance of democracy and consolidating democracy.
AD: An interesting theme in the film is this idea of reconciling with a nation’s past, which I think is something we’ve been struggling with in America, bringing forth and discussing the injustices that have taken place in an effort to work through that national trauma.
SM: Yes. And I believe cinema is a great tool to work on this topic of memory and the importance of memory. And I think our film is contributing a little bit to consolidate this memory of the awfulness of the dictatorship and the importance of this trial the importance of accountability.
But the main thing for me is that I realized that many people in Argentina were forgetting about this trial. The younger generations, because 40 years have passed, are so used to democracy that they don’t remember how difficult it was for our country to recover that democracy and how important this trial was for the rebuilding of that democracy.
I think cinema is a great tool for setting discussions and making people think about political issues and the problems within society. I truly believe this.
And I’m very happy that this film has been able to be seen widely in my country, but also in many other counties as well.
AD: Yes, you’ve said before that you believe that Argentina remembers a lot about the dictatorship but doesn’t necessarily remember much about that transition to democracy. Why do you think that is? Do you think it’s because people take democracy for granted?
SM: Yes, exactly; I think it’s people taking democracy for granted, which is a terrible thing. They forgot how hard and terrible it was to [live under] the dictatorship. I cannot blame anyone in particular. Or I can blame everyone, including myself. How did we let this happen? Let people forget about the awfulness of the dictatorship. And how could they not remember this trial, this magnific event, a unique event in the region? Argentina was the only place in South America that was completely governed by a dictatorship that did a trial like this, and they did it one year afterward.
It’s not something I have an answer for, and there is probably more than one answer and more than one person responsible. The importance of this memory needs to be worked on every day in institutions and through art, which sometimes can help. So, I’m very happy that we are helping.
AD: You worked on Argentina, 1985 for many years, directing and co-writing it. You’ve talked about how you went through several drafts. Can you talk me through your initial idea and what we ended up seeing? What were those different iterations, and what themes were you wrestling with?
SM: I wanted to work on the trial, on what the film is. But besides that, there were two topics that I wanted to work on a lot. One is the family. I thought that this family, this political group where you belong, was important to me.
The Strassera family was a representation of middle-class families who supported democracy and wanted democracy and were suffering under the dictatorship at the same time. And the family of Luis Moreno Ocampo (Peter Lanzani), who were the opposite, a family that was participating in the dictatorship and supporting the dictatorship. But then there was the other point of view, the families that were totally destroyed during the dictatorship—like the people who gave testimony during the trial, the woman who gave birth in a police car, the people who were kidnapped, the woman whose daughter disappeared, or the high school that was kidnapped and all of his friends were killed. So, talking about families was important for me.
Also, to portray an image of youth participating in the political changes. When I realized that Strassera, because he did not have the support of most of the people in the justice department to build a team, he went and looked for 20-year-old law lawyers, the lower ranks, and he brought them to work with him, and what they achieved—to bring all the proof to do this trial was amazing.
I thought it was a great image to bring to these days where there is so much political skepticism among the youth. And, you can see those two energies, the experience plus the energy of the youth, that is needed to bring real change.
AD: You could have made this a straight courtroom drama, and you had enough iconic moments and big speeches to do that, but there’s also a lot of humor, wit, and style within the film. How did you manage that?
SM: I don’t know to be honest. Mariano [Llinás] and I were a little bit afraid that the film, because of this painful subject or this relevant historic subject, could be a little bit solemn.
We knew that we needed to grab the audience. And the humor was there because Strassera was a funny guy. Everyone who we spoke to told us a funny story about Strassera, many things, small things, like his jealousy with his daughter’s boyfriend.
So we started to write the first scene and realized it was a funny scene, that maybe people would laugh when they watched the film, and we understood that we could use that to get closer to the characters. And it came from the research. It was true that these people from the prosecution team needed to use humor to protect themselves from how painful it was to do that research and the things that they were listening to all day. So, it was something that came very organically.
Many people that watched the film thanked us because of that. And it brings some originality to the way that historical films about these important subjects are usually portrayed. And it works. Actually, when I watch the film, sometimes I’m amazed that after you watch those awful moments, the torture, 10 minutes later, there’s a scene where all the audience is laughing.
It was very surprising, part of the research, and part of the magnificent way that Ricardo inhabited the character.
AD: When filming moments so intense and emotional, do you find that you detach yourself as a filmmaker to get through it? Or do you say, ‘I’m going to lean into this emotion and pain completely, and sort of let it engulf me and take over?’
SM: it’s both. In a film like this, it was impossible not to cry at some moments because it was like a reenactment. We were in the actual courtroom where the trial took place, and the witnesses were dressed exactly like the witness they were representing and saying the exact same words. So, it was like traveling in time and listening to it for the first time. Sometimes when I said ‘cut’ everyone was crying, including me.
But then we had to repeat [the scene], and the technique needed to be precise and the timing of the shoot needed to be fast. But it was certainly a very intense and moving experience, especially the scenes in the courtroom.
AD: Argentina, 1985 uses a lot of archival footage. I’m curious if documentary filmmaking is something that interests you.
SM: I do a lot of documentary as a part of the process of doing a film. I go to the places I shoot and get a lot of footage. I talk to the people and do video interviews when it’s needed. So I feel like documentary is a part of my work as a feature fiction filmmaker. I definitely will do it at some point, but I enjoy working with the actors so much. I enjoy the connection I have with them.
AD: You have such great chemistry with your actors. You’ve spoken a lot about how personal those relationships have meant to you over the years.
SM: Yes, yes I do. It’s one of the parts of filmmaking that I care about the most. I worked a lot with my actors, not doing rehearsal necessarily, but making them participate in the idea of making the film with me. To try to feel this solitude that filmmakers usually feel. I can be vulnerable and tell them that I don’t know what I’m going to do. And they can help me, and I can help them, and be collaborative and understand what an actor needs. That’s something I never stop learning about. As I said, that’s what I enjoyed the most, and luckily I always become very good friends with my actors. I’m always thinking about new ideas and ways to work with them again.
AD: This is such a big moment for you and your career. You just signed with CAA. Have you thought about what comes after Argentina, 1985?
SM: Since I started to show this film in September at the Venice Film Festival, it’s been like a roller coaster. I’ve been traveling everywhere and working in Argentina also. I did not have time to think of what I’m going next. I’m just enjoying the ride. It’s a film that I really want to travel with and to talk about. It’s an important film for this time.
I want to enjoy this moment. But certainly, I will keep working on political films or political subjects, which I’m interested in, in cinema. I don’t know what, and I don’t know where, but I’m very eager to go back to work.
AD: In talking about the film and spending so much time with it, and getting all this feedback, has that sort of unlocked aspects of the film or given you a new perspective on something that you knew so well?
SM: Honestly, I did not expect all the connections that people from other countries would make to the film. That was totally unexpected. I kind of knew how the film would be received in Argentina. But not in the rest of the world. And how people in the U.S. are connecting it to January 6, in Brazil, in Spain, and what the Spanish democratic process did not do. It’s impressive. For me, as a political filmmaker, it’s the best thing that can happen. For people, when they watch your film, to discuss the reality, or history of their own countries, and not just the film as a cinematic experience. People are amplifying the film, and they feel this film is talking about things that they care about and that their countries care about.
Argentina, 1985 is available on Amazon Prime Video.
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