The Secret in Their Eyes

Juan José Campanella’s film is not simply Argentine; it is an Argentina and Spain co-production, with Tornasol Films alongside Haddock Films and 100 Bares. Campanella spent a year turning Eduardo Sacheri’s novel over, then went to the author with two or three large changes already decided and proposed they write it together. The stadium passage is the one showy move. It begins in the air above Huracán’s ground, drops into the stands and carries on into the corridors as a single unbroken take, shot in three days and then given nine months of post; two hundred extras became a packed stadium. Everything around it is quiet, built on talk and watching faces, so do not take that sequence as the film’s measure. At the 82nd Academy Awards it won Foreign Language Film, making Argentina a winner there for the second time after The Official Story. At the 24th Goya Awards it took Best Spanish Language Foreign Film and Soledad Villamil won Best New Actress, while Campanella, Ricardo Darín and cinematographer Félix Monti were nominated. Billy Ray made an American version in 2015. A good fit if you want a resolution that arrives outside the law and a love plot weighted as heavily as the case. Not for anyone unable to sit through a rape and a killing shown directly.