Set in 1970's Argentina when a military junta was in force, Christopher Hampton's harsh, harrowing film shows all too clearly the way a population can suffer at the hands of a dictatorship. As in Costa-Gavras's Missing, we see how easy it is for those who wish to engage in peaceful protest can "disappear", while behind the scenes, in ever-bulging makeshift prisons, torture, rape and abuse goes on.

It in this world that we come across theatre director Carlos Rueda (Antonio Banderas), whose wife Cecilia (Emma Thompson) is arrested by the police for alleged minor crimes. Carlos campaigns tirelessly to try and discover where she has been taken, but to no avail, and it is left to their daughter to try and comfort him at such a difficult time. As in Missing, much of the rest of the film is taken up with his search and her appalling experiences. Through a sixth sense, Carlos can see what has happened to others who have been taken, but not, for some inexplicable reason, to his wife.

Imagining Argentina has all the right sentiments and whilst you cannot fault the drive of the film to expose injustice, the script lacks significant inspiration and ultimately authenticity is damaged by the fact that everyone speaks English, without resort to subtitles, which gives it a TV-movie-ish feel.

At the end, startling facts are displayed over the final credits about how many suffered at the hands of the military, who were soon to be engaged in the Falklands conflict, leaving you feeling comfortable that they were otherwise occupied, following their dreadful actions shown here.