From 1974 to 1983, the Argentine military junta waged a “dirty war” against its own citizens under the pretext of national security. Tens of thousands of people from all social strata were marked down as subversives, and “disappeared” – murdered at the hands of the state. Composed entirely of courtroom footage from the landmark 1985 Trial of the Juntas, where nine military officials including dictator-in-chief Jorge Rafael Videla were prosecuted for their crimes, Ulises de la Orden’s searing documentary makes for a profound work of preservation and remembrance.
Culled from 530 hours of archive recordings, the film is divided into 18 chapters, each titled after a moving phrase taken from the testimonies. These headings distil the barbarism of the military’s genocidal tactics. Delivered in a judicial setting, harrowing stories told by former detainees and victims’ relatives lay bare the methodology of state-sponsored violence, as well as the collective trauma shared across generations. Confronted with the anger and the pain of the witnesses, the defence responds with feeble arguments professing patriotism, which are met with jeers and disgust from the spectators. The extraordinarily precise editing maintains the bubbling tension between multiple vantage points, groups with clashing ideas of justice.
Even so, the focus is largely on the witnesses and the survivors, who are mostly filmed from behind. Considering that many break down while recounting past horrors, the fact that their faces are obscured lends a dignity to their emotions, and de-sensationalises their experiences. They are no longer lone victims, instead their voices form a chorus of dissent and solidarity in the face of the junta’s deliberate erasure of any trace of physical evidence. Preserving their oral history not only bears witness to past injustice but also sounds a warning to the future.
• The Trial is on True Story from 24 April.
