Argentina, 1985, Santiago Mitre’s film about the prosecution team behind the landmark Trial of the Juntas, was the big winner on Saturday night at the Platino Awards, where it won five of the 14 categories it was nominated for, including Best Ibero-American Fiction Film.

Mitre’s Oscar-nominated film also won Best Screenplay (Santiago Mitre and Mariano Llinás), Best Actor (Ricardo Darín), Best Art Direction (Micalea Saiegh), and the Platino Award for Film and Education in Values, which was received by producer Axel Kuschevatzky.

“This film exists because memory is important, and violence is not the solution for anything anywhere in the world,” he said. “We must fight for memory, truth and justice. So, ‘Never Again’.”

The Best Fiction Debut Film went to Chilean-Argentine co-production 1976, which also deals with the Southern Cone’s dictatorships: the film is about an upper-class woman who secretly protects a political dissident during Augusto Pinochet’s dictatorship. Director Manuela Martelli received the award and stated that “fifty years after the coup in Chile, we must continue to keep memory alive.”

Other Argentine winners included actor Guillermo Francella, who won Best Actor in a Miniseries for Netflix’s El encargado (The One in Charge), a series about a building supervisor who takes advantage of his powers of surveillance to meddle in the tenants’ lives. The series was directed by Gastón Duprat and Mariano Cohen, who also topped the new category Best Ibero-American Fiction Comedy with their film Official Competition, a satire about the art film world starring Antonio Banderas and Penélope Cruz. Actor Alejandro Awada won Best Supporting Actor in a Miniseries or Teleseries for his role in Amazon’s Iosi, the repentant spy.

The Spanish film As Bestas was the other big winning film, with four awards: Best Director for Rodrigo Sorogoyen, Best Sound Direction for Aitor Berenguer, Fabiola Ordoyo and Yasmina Praderas, Best Editing for Alberto del Campo, and Best Supporting Actor for Luis Zahera. 

Another Spanish film, Cinco lobitos, won the Best Actress and Best Supporting Actress awards for Laia Costa and Susi Sánchez, respectively. The actresses had previously shared the Spanish Goya award for Best Actress for the same film.

Mexico’s Águila y Jaguar: Los guerreros legendarios, directed by Mike R. Ortiz, won the Best Animated Film award. The film is set in a post apocalyptic future where two young survivors travel back in time to find the mythical power of the prehispanic god of water.

The Best Documentary went for El caso Padilla, directed by Pavel Giroud. The film depicts the story of Cuban poet Heberto Padilla, who was imprisoned and forced to publicly repent for opposing the Fidel Castro government in 1971.

Bolivia’s Utama, a fiction film directed by Alejandro Loayza Grisi about about an elderly Quechua couple forced to deal with a devastating drought in the Altiplano, won the country’s first Platino awards: Best Original Screenplay for Cergio Prudencio and Best Cinematography for Bárbara Álvarez.

In the Series categories, the Colombian-Chilean adaptation of Gabriel García Marquez’s Noticia de un secuestro, directed by Andrés Wood and Rodrigo García, took four prizes: Best Fiction Miniseries or Teleseries, Best Actress in a Miniseries o Teleseries (Cristina UmañaI), and Best Supporting Actress in a Miniseries or Teleseries (Majida Issa), and Best Showrunner for a Miniseries or Teleseries (Andrés Wood y Rodrigo García).

The Honorary Platino in this tenth edition of the awards was granted to actor Benicio del Toro, who recounted in his speech what it meant to be a Latin actor in Hollywood. 

“We latinos are not all the same, and it’s all about showing that the most important thing is what we share, not what divides us,” he said. 

Promoted by audiovisual rights management firm EGEDA and the federation of Ibero-American film and audiovisual producers (FIPCA), the Platino Awards’ gala ceremony was held at the Madrid’s Ifema Municipal Palace and hosted by Colombian actress and singer Carolina Gaitán, Mexican actor Omar Chaparro and Spanish actress Paz Vega.