Cine argentino

Campanella’s film noir hit to vie for the Best Foreign Language Picture award
El secreto... nominated for Oscars

The news came as no surprise to the nearly 2.5 million viewers of Juan José Campanella film noir hit El secreto de sus ojos (The Secret In Their Eyes / The Secret of Her Eyes), but it was certainly good news for the thriving Argentine movie industry.
Directed by Juan José Campanella — whose previous directorial efforts received mixed to good reviews but were in general derided by the local intelligentsia for their overt sentimentalism — The Secret In Their Eyes, based on Eduardo Sacheri’s novel El secreto de sus ojos, veered off Campanella’s trademark predictability to tell the disturbing story of an unsolved murder-rape case which haunts a court clerk, Benjamín Espósito (Ricardo Darín).
Obsessed with the cold case, Espósito decides to spend his early retirement days writing a fictionalized account of the brutal crime.
Thirty years after the case was filed away, Espósito dusts off the archives with the help of a former fellow worker (Guillermo Francella) and judge Irene Hastings.
The Secret of Campanella’s thriller lies, perhaps, in that the director chose to follow one main narrative line while leaving long-concealed feelings, longings and deceptions in the background. Also in the background, but more prominent in the case, is the impunity with which the armed forces operated during the 1976-1983 military dictatorship.
The Secret In Their Eyes is Campanella’s second Oscar nomination, after Son of the Bride (2001). The Secret... is Argentina’s sixth effort to claim the coveted statuette, which it won on only one ocassion, with Luis Puenzo’s 1985 The Official Story, in which the issue of the children of the disappeared was closer in time and more painful to the people of Argentina.

Campanella's filmography:

1. El secreto de sus ojos (2009)
2. Luna de Avellaneda (2004)
3. El hijo de la novia (2001)
4. El mismo amor, la misma lluvia (1999)
5. Ni el tiro del final (1997)
6. Victoria 392 (commercially unreleased, 1982)
7. Prioridad nacional (medium-length film, 1979).