Made under the military regime and under conditions of severe censorship, Adolfo Aristarain's tightly narrated and powerful thriller dealt with Argentine frustration at the impossibility of avenging the junta's atrocities. A munitions expert discovers that the copper mine for which he works is systematically violating safety regulations. When those in charge refuse to respond to his complaints, he agrees to participate in a friend's scheme to defraud the company through a faked accident. He pretends to have been struck mute and proceeds to press the company for a settlement. His struggle to expose the mining company's injustices can be read as an allegory for life under the junta, and his silence as the silencing of an entire society, but also as the possibility of resisting the regime's seeming impunity-using its own terms. Kathy Geritz