Buenos Aires 1977

Buenos Aires 1977 tells the true story of four men who narrowly escaped death at the hands of a military death squad during the Argentinean dirty war in the late 1970s.

The Dirty War is the name given to the state-sponsored violence against citizens mostly carried out between 1976 and 1983 by Jorge Rafael Videla's military government in Argentina during what was called by the dictatorship the "National Reorganization Process" or what the modern world calls "genocide".

The film follows Claudio Tamburrini, a goal keeper for a minor league football team, who was forcefully kidnapped by members of the Argentine secret military police.

He is taken to a detention center known as Sere Mansion which is an old dilapitated house in a suburban neighborhood on the suspicion he's an anti-government terrorist.

Tamburrini is not alone and his fellow abductees are frequently tortured by the jailers for information he doesn't have because he was never a political activist.

After four months of imprisonment, and many sessions of torture, Tamburrini and his fellow captives make a break for freedom.

It is a gripping film throughout with bleak filming adding depth to the situation making it a taut psychological thriller especially because you are aware that this actually happened. The camera work and acting immerse the viewer into the mundane but arduous life that these innocent prisoners lead right through to the climatic finale.

According to the Nunca Más report issued by the National Commission on the Disappearance of Persons (CONADEP) in 1984, about 9,000 people were "disappeared" between 1976 and 1983. Estimates by human rights organizations place the number at closer to 30,000.

Buenos Aires 1977 is a deeply moving and involving film worth a trip to the cinema for an education on both how to shoot this kind of film and a brief education about the not-so-distant Dirty War of Argentina.

I would give this film 9.1 non-political prisoners out of 10.