Costa-Gavras's Latin American Films and The Formation of Transnational Cold War Imaginaries, Networks, and Audiences

Despite his surprisingly sustained and vital film production, Costa-Gavras’s oeuvre will be inevitably remembered for the films he made during the Cold War period. Costa-Gavras’s “Latin American” films, State of Siege (1972) and Missing (1982), enjoyed wide popularity at the box office, but received negative reviews from film critics and scholars, who didn't approve of Costa-Gavras’s reliance on the thriller genre. Based on archival research of printed press articles from Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay, Mexico, France, and the United States, along with historical research, biographies, and testimonies published during the last four decades, the present article assembles a transnational history of Costa-Gavras’s “Latin American” film production and reception in the region. The main hypothesis is that both films operated as cultural artefacts for filmmakers, political and social activists, and engaged audiences. By watching those movies, the aforementioned actors could process, learn about, and reflect upon the traumatic national, regional, and global events that occurred across the Southern Cone during the late Cold War period.