In 2009, Argentinian director Juan José Campanella won the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar for The Secret in Their Eyes, the story of the an investigation of cold case told in flashbacks to the 1970s. The film won several truckloads of awards all around the world, and represents one of the few FLF Oscars winners that qualifies as a genuine mystery thriller. The sort of story Hollywood used to make all the time, so naturally it’s been adapted and packed full of Oscar nominees: Chiwetel Ejiofor, Nicole Kidman and Julia Roberts. Because subtitles require reading and I guess it’s assumed that most American moviegoers don’t do that. The Americanized version is directed by Billy Ray who helped write a screenplay that did something to State of Play that drained all the urgency right out of the UK original, but let’s not dwell on that. As director, Billy Ray’s debut film was Shattered Glass, a tight tense little knockout a dozen years ago. In 2013, he was Oscar nominated for his screenplay for Captain Phillips, a tight tense enormous knockout.
A tight-knit team of FBI investigators, along with their District Attorney supervisor, is suddenly torn apart when they discover that one of their own teenage daughters has been brutally murdered. Written and directed by Academy Award® nominee Billy Ray (Captain Phillips, The Hunger Games), and produced by Academy Award® winner Mark Johnson (Rain Man, “Breaking Bad”), Secret In Their Eyes is an intense, powerful, haunting thriller starring Academy Award® nominee Chiwetel Ejiofor, and Academy Award® winners Nicole Kidman and Julia Roberts.