Alicia Marnet de Ibáñez is a high school history professor and a well-to-do housewife in Buenos Aires, circa 1983, after the fall of the "junta militar" that had taken over the government since 1976. She has a husband, Roberto, who is a succesful lawyer and a five-year-old adopted daughter.

Winner of the 1985 Best Foreign-Language Film Academy Award, Luis Puenzo's La História oficial / The Official Story is deeply disturbing in its unflinching depiction of the evil lurking inside respectable members of society. Paradoxically, this Argentinian production is also deeply moving in its unsentimental portrayal of the human struggle for justice, however painful the outcome. Set circa 1983, at the crumbling of the right-wing military junta that had ruled the country with an iron fist since 1976, La História oficial is the not-at-all official story of a Buenos Aires high school history teacher (Norma Aleandro) who learns that her adopted daughter may have been the offspring of two of Argentina's thousands of desaparecidos—victims of that country's "dirty little war" against those who protested or fought the junta. Her husband (Hector Alterio), a lawyer with ties to the military vehemently denies having taken part in such an ignominious deed, but the mounting (unofficial) evidence seems to indicate otherwise. Veteran Hector Alterio is excellent as the lawyer who, however greedy and dogmatic, is completely dedicated to his adopted daughter's happiness. Norma Aleandro, for her part, gives what is one of the greatest performances in film history. Evolving from one of history's bystanders into an active, thinking participant in the world around her, Aleandro displays her transformation via subtle facial expressions and a controlled but highly effective use of her voice. As natural and truthful a film actress as there ever was, Aleandro would surely have been a top contender for the 1985 Oscars had La História oficial been an English-language film, but since it was a small, Spanish-language Argentinian production, the actress didn't even get a nomination from the generally navel-gazing actors' branch of the Academy. The (then) less chauvinistic New York Film Critics' Circle, however, did present her with their Best Actress award.