The feature film directed by Santiago Miterwith Ricardo Darin playing the prosecutor Julius Caesar Strassera Y Peter Lanzani In the role of Luis Moreno Ocampo, opens in theaters next Thursday, September 29. His successful passage through the San Sebastian Film Festival I conclude with a flourish when I receive the Public Award of the Spanish cinematographic encounter in its seventieth edition. “It is an honor and adds to the beautiful path that a film is making that tells a story so Argentine, but at the same time so universal,” declared its producer. Axel Kuschevatzky.
the former prosecutor Luis Moreno Ocampo spoke with NEWS about the film. In it, her character is played on the tape by Lanzani. Here he tells us the details of the genesis of the award-winning film, how the script for the duo of Santiago Miter – Mariano Llinás and what aspects of the lawyer’s life stood out in the film.
NEWS: In what aspect were you able to contribute to the production of the film?
Luis Moreno Ocampo: Santiago Mitre, preparing the film, interviewed me a couple of times and I use a book of mine as a source. I read the script for the movie. Legally, public figures can be presented without consulting, but they wanted to show me the script in case there was a specific problem. It seems to me that the film is a very good opportunity to rediscuss the meaning of the Trial of the Juntas, which for me is like the May revolutionwith a similar impact.
NEWS: One of the sources for the tape was your book “When Power Lost Judgment.” Did you have any qualms about being based on the book?
Moreno Ocampo: The film is a fiction, based on real events and is a film by Santiago Miter. The characters present Santiago’s ideas. I tried to help him to show him the influence of legal systems on character traits. Beyond the differences between Julio, myself, the judges and the defenders, we all had a mission. The legal mission that we had defined our activity a lot, even for the young guys that we called as part of the team. Try to show Santiago how our mission influenced our behavior.
NEWS: Upon reading the script, how did you see your personal life and your relationship with Julio Strassera reflected?
Luis Moreno Ocampo: I had a very intimate relationship with Strassera. Julio let me direct the investigation and at the public hearing, when Julio played a very leading role, we shared everything at all times. We had a very close relationship. It was a find in the script, in focusing on the two prosecutors, the prosecution team and the testimonies, and all a complex thing is put into a smaller story. They asked me about my personal history and they took something that was influential, a part of my family is military. My mother’s father was a general and her brothers all studied at the military school and became colonels. I appreciated and valued the military because the ones I met were honest, responsible and supportive. My uncle who was all that stopped talking to me, I think that conflict with my military family was what they took from my personal history for the film.
NEWS: From the Trial of the Boards to the Criminal Court of The Hague, what impact did that judicial process have on your career?
Moreno Ocampo: I always thought I was like a soccer player who started playing in the world cup final for Argentina. There was nothing more important, that was the best in the world. I stayed on as a prosecutor for two more years in the trials of Camps and the police of the province of Buenos Aires. Later Julio Strassera left and I took his place. I was a prosecutor in the Malvinas Trial, in many cases of corruption and in the last military rebellion. Then I left the prosecutor’s office and I thought I had already done the most relevant thing in my life. It was done. It turns out that he invites me Stanford and then Harvard to give classes as a visiting professor and I thought it was spectacular. At that moment, they call me on the phone and tell me that my work in the Trial of the Boards installed me as the maximum candidate to be the first prosecutor of the International Criminal Court. I went to an interview in New York and after three months they appointed me. The Trial of the Juntas went from being the most valuable work of my life to being my training to organize the first permanent world prosecutor’s office.
NEWS: What influence does the film have in the current context?
Moreno Ocampo: Legal designs are invisible. People who are not lawyers don’t see it, and people who are lawyers see details. So the fundamental things, like the prohibition of killing or torturing, are things that the lawyers don’t discuss because they are obvious. However, in life, people have to come back to discuss it. The film takes us back to the basics, you cannot kill, the right to a fair trial. Still Videla. Everyone has the right to a fair trial and that was what happened in 1985.
NEWS: What legacy rescues the Juntas from the Judgment today?
Moreno Ocampo: The Trial of the Boards consolidated democracy like nothing that had been done. Until the year ’83, all democratic governments had been overthrown before they finished their mandate. The trial ended with the civil groups that supported themselves in the military to carry out a coup d’état. That changed everything, now there is freedom. At that time there was no freedom. The book “The little Prince” had been banned. People were forbidden to meet. People for having ideas with a certain particularity could be kidnapped and disappeared. That freedom that we achieved was consolidated by the trial of the Juntas.
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