Academy Award winner Julia Roberts stars in the crime thriller Secret In Their Eyes based on the 2010 Academy Award Best Foreign Language Film by Juan Jose Campanella El Secreto de Sus Ojos.
Billy Ray directed the Hollywood adaptation that brings Julia Roberts in a surprising mystery that explores the personal themes of loss, betrayal, and a parent’s undying will to right a profound wrong.
DA investigator Jess Cobb (Julia Roberts), FBI investigator Ray Kasten (Chiwetel Ejiofor), and Deputy District Attorney Claire Sloan (Nicole Kidman) are rising stars, having been selected to serve on an anti-terrorism joint task force in post 9/11 Los Angeles.
“El Secreto de Sus Ojos is spectacular,” says Billy, “I was completely floored by it, had a reverence for it that bordered on awe.”
Every time he got frustrated tackling the weighty subject matter, he had an unabashed cheerleader in Juan Campanella, who directed the Argentine film. “Here was a man who wanted to solve a cold case but the reason why he wanted to solve it was not only to find the culprit but to find the root of his own loneliness,” Campanella says. “That to me was very original. Contrary to what people might think, I really like it when somebody takes a piece of work and turns it into something different.”
Billy says an impetus for the American version lay in the events of 9/11. ”The horror of that event was so big and so indelible for anybody who was in America at that time. But it created a story opportunity for our movie that no other context could have.”
“Billy found a great twist on the story,” Campanella says. “He respected a lot of the emotion of the original but found a very American way of telling it.” Billy admits that he initially thought he was writing a movie about loss. “But it turns out that I was writing a movie about obsession. Stories do that sometimes, they tell you what they are about.
Secret In Their Eyes opens Dec. 2 in theatres nationwide from Axinite Digicinema.
Check out the film’s trailer here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wNDJKnNvLtE