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EXCLUSIVE: Oscar-nominated Santiago Mitre is making an Argentina-set political thriller for Netflix starring Peter Lanzani and Verónica Llinás. Mitre received an Academy Award nom for Argentina, 1985 and writes and directs the as-yet-unnamed movie, which is rooted in historical events.
Filming starts in March and will take place in and around Buenos Aires. We have the first plot details. The film follows a high-ranking officer infiltrating groups peacefully organizing to demand the release of detained relatives. Argentina was under military rule from 1976 to 1983, a period in which tens of thousands of people disappeared. The abovementioned groups were giving rise to a form of civil resistance at the heart of the dictatorship that was running the country.
Exploring Argentina’s real-life history is familiar territory for Mitre. His critically acclaimed legal drama Argentina, 1985 followed two lawyers prosecuting members of the country’s brutal former military dictatorship. The movie premiered in competition at Venice in 2022 where it won the Fipresci prize.
“This film reconstructs a real, specific moment, and does so from the inside, following ordinary people in an extreme situation,” said Mitre about the new Netflix project. He directs from a screenplay he wrote with Mariano Llinás and added: “It does not attempt to encompass an entire era, but rather to observe how violence seeps into everyday life. A story that reveals the most intimate betrayal and the most powerful resistance. A thriller based on real events, where what is most unsettling is that nothing seems extraordinary—until it’s too late.”
Peter Lanzani, who starred as one of the lawyers in Argentina, 1985 alongside Ricardo Darín, reunites with Mitre for the untitled Netflix project. He will play the officer getting inside the groups wanting information about their relatives. The star acknowledged that he is taking on one of the darkest roles of his career.
“Accepting this role means embracing discomfort from day one,” Lanzani said. “It’s a character that requires understanding real mechanisms of manipulation and betrayal, not caricatures. The responsibility lies in neither softening nor exaggerating it, but making it believable. Preparing for it involves working on the trust and mistrust someone like him generates—and accepting that telling this story also carries an ethical weight.”
Llinás, meanwhile, will play a mother searching for her son, a part she described as a responsibility and a privilege. “I approach the character from her humanity, not from what she represents,” she said. “I’m interested in her clarity, her determination, and the way she transforms pain into action. It’s a story about collective courage, but also about very specific personal decisions.”
Buenos Aires-based La Unión de los Ríos and Paris-based Maneki Films are the labels producing the films. They previously produced Mitre’s movie Pequeña Flor (Little Flower). Agustina Llambi Campbell, Mitre & Didar Domehri are producers on the new project.
Netflix has been investing in a stream of Argentine movies in recent times, per our exclusives about new Juan José Campanella, Ricardo Darín and Diego Peretti projects, among others.
English (US) ·