As explored in the Introduction to the Argentine industry, Juan José Campanella's Argentine films are the product of 1990s neoliberal economic policies and related changes to the previously solely government-supported film industry. Working with transnational media conglomerates formed in the free trade oriented media de-regulation of the 1990s, Campanella's Argentine solo-directed features El mismo amor, la misma lluvia (1999), the Oscarnominated El hijo de la novia (2001) and Luna de Avellaneda (2004), the Oscar-winning El secreto de sus ojos (2009) and Metegol (2013) controversially epitomise the shift away from an auteur/art cinema dominated model of state patronised national cinema of the 1980s and early 1990s towards a model of high-grossing, transnationally co-produced mainstream genre features which nevertheless still receive some funding from the state (Losada 2010: 4). Campanella was already a television and feature film director in the United States before he began his solo directing career in Argentina with El mismo amor, la misma lluvia. Unlike Iñárritu, Cuarón, del Toro, Meirelles and Salles, Campanella has, to date, not followed the international successes of his second (El hijo de la novia) or fourth (El secreto de sus ojos) features by making deterritorialised films outside of Argentina, but has simply continued working transnationally in other ways, moving between work as a director of ‘quality’ television series in the US including House (2007–2010), Law and Order (2000–2010) and 30 Rock (2006), his own creative television projects in Argentina, including his co-written Argentina/Spain mini-series Vientos de Agua (Winds of Water 2006), and making more Argentine features. He has however, like the other transnational auteurs written about in this book, been the object of analyses that criticise the mainstream ‘commercial’ forms (melodrama, the thriller) and venues he works in (US television, transnational conglomerates) and consequently question the national credentials of his Argentine films (Andermann 2011; Losada 2010).

Despite being recognised as an ‘industry auteur’ – a term which carries with it a sense of ‘quality’ mainstream filmmaking and ‘personal artistic vision’ – amongst Argentine critics Campanella has many detractors (Copertari 2009: 10, 95). The most ‘fervent’, as Argentine critic Diego Batlle points out (2009b), are the critics from El Amante Cine, one of the journals that has most championed the nuevo cine argentino and most maligned Campanella's work (Kercher 2015: 334).