The Official Story (1985) became the biggest international success in Argentina’s film history when it won an Academy Award for best foreign language film. Directed by Luis Puenzo the film is set in 1983, in the waning days of the military dictatorship that ruled Argentina from 1976 and waged a dirty war of torture and murder against its opposition. It centres on a middle-class high-school teacher of history who gradually discovers that the infant she had adopted was born in prison to a mother who been seized by the military and never seen again.
Portraying the painful enlightenment of a conventional woman, Norma Aleandro, who had fled Argentina in 1976, won an award for her performance at the Cannes film festival.