Written by Mitre and Mariano Llinás, it stars Ricardo Darín, Peter Lanzani, Alejandra Flechner, and Norman Briski.

Strassera and Moreno Ocampo interview and assemble a team, many of whom work in government offices and can use their access to materials to help the case.

President Raúl Alfonsín invites Strassera to meet with him and informs him that he is keeping a close watch on the court events and was deeply moved by the testimony of the witnesses.

[20] Martín Rodríguez, journalist, writer, political analyst[38] and a friend of director Santiago Mitre, originally gave him the suggestion to make a film about the Trial of the Juntas in 2016.

[39] Rodríguez joined the project as a historical researcher and adviser,[40] and later brought screenwriter, producer and journalist Federico Scigliano on as a collaborator, working throughout 2017.

[41][40] They constructed a "'state of the art' on debates and discussions around the trial and the time",[41] offering "possible ideas, entry points, and threads" on the subject which had a certain level of topicality.

[41] Their methodology consisted of interviewing many of the people who had participated in the trial and were still alive, such as Luis Moreno Ocampo, León Arslanián, Judith König, Carlos "Maco" Somigliana, and Enrique "Coti" Nosiglia,[40] who served as Minister of the Interior for president Raúl Alfonsín in 1987.

[44] Mitre mentioned political thrillers All the President's Men (1976) and The Post (2017) as influences for "the tension of contemporary cinema" and "a very energetic concept of group work", as well as the Chilean film No (2012), which is also about a democratic transition in Latin America.

After reading the first draft of the script, Darín took the role, despite generally not being interested in playing characters based on real people,[51] and became a producer on the film as well.

[51][53] Mitre, along with Darín and Lanzani, decided not to have them mimic the voice and mannerisms of the actual Strassera and Moreno Ocampo, taking artistic liberty with their performances.

[54][55] Similarly, Laura Paredes initially tried to imitate Adriana Calvo's actual tone of voice but found it made the performance seem artificial and disconnected.

Juliá employed a large format lens with a shallower depth of field to focus on the witnesses instead of on the context around them; he shot the courtroom scenes with an Arri Alexa LF and Signature Prime lenses, using "classic and restrained camera movement" such as dolly tracks and cranes.

He shot with wider lenses, which brought "texture and rawness" to the footage, and hand-held camera movements to convey "the energy amongst the legal team or the tension in the Strassera household".

[67] Spanish composer Pedro Osuna started working with Mitre's team in March 2022, writing the main themes of the music in four days,[68] during post-production for the film.

[78] Amazon Studios released the film in select theaters in the United States on 30 September 2022, before it started streaming on Prime Video on 21 October 2022.

[81] Later in August, Sony announced it would no longer be distributing the film, with local company Digicine stepping in as distributor and keeping its original release date.

[82] Due to the short window of exclusivity, international theater chains Cinemark-Hoyts, Cinépolis, and Showcase Cinemas refused to show the film.

The site's consensus reads, "Justice is served in Argentina, 1985, a crusading courtroom drama that shines a light on historically somber times with refreshing levity".

[95] Guillermo Courau from La Nación, in a five-star review, called Argentina, 1985 a "necessary film" and noted how it balanced faithfulness to the real events with the creative liberties taken.

Scholz commended the authenticity of the performances,[99] as did Michael Ordoña from the Los Angeles Times, who thought the characters' humanity was particularly present in the depiction of Strassera as an ordinary man.

[100] The Hollywood Reporter's Sheri Linden thought Darín's portrayal of Strassera, along with Mitre's direction, effectively conveyed the high stakes of the trial depicted in the film.

[101] Writing for The Guardian, Peter Bradshaw gave the film four-out-of-five stars, highlighting Darín's acting and praising Lanzani's "attractive and sympathetic" performance.

[102] Guy Lodge at Variety highlighted Darín for Strassera's final speech, which he considered "one of the most riveting, hair-raising scenes of speechifying in recent cinema".

[99] Monks Kaufman pointed out its shifts in tone, contrasting the seriousness of the trial scenes with the "Ally McBeal-esque irreverence" of Strassera's personal life.

[104] Aguilar noted the dynamism of Andrés P. Estrada's editing and the insertion of real archive footage "as if past and present converged in the same instant".

[98] Lodge praised Llinás's concise script and considered Juliá's cinematography, Saiegh's art direction, and Estrada's editing were responsible for the film's "cinematic sweep and scope".

[103] Linden considered that Juliá's cinematography and Pedro Osuna's musical score were the main elements that contributed an atmosphere of unease to the film.

[97] Lodge also believed that Argentina, 1985 was more classical in its storytelling than other films dealing with the same subject matter, likening Mitre to filmmakers such as Aaron Sorkin and Steven Spielberg.

[102] Linden criticized the occasional appearance of legal drama tropes among other aspects of the screenplay, such as underdeveloped supporting characters and instances of flat dialogue.