TERROR'S ADVOCATE
From the Director of REVERSAL OF FORTUNE, SINGLE WHITE FEMALE & MAITRESSE
TERROR'S ADVOCATE (CERT TBC)
(L' Avocat de la terreur)
A film by BARBET SCHROEDER
OFFICIAL SELECTION - CANNES FILM FESTIVAL 2007
LONDON FILM FESTIVAL 2007
Starring
Jacques Verga
France / 2007 / 135 Mins / In French with English Subtitles / Colour / 1:1.85 / DOLBY SR
UK RELEASE DATE: 16 MAY 2008
Opening at West End Venues and selected Cinemas nationwide
Jacques Verga's the kind of lawyer that people love to hate. Over several decades, he's made a career out of defending some of the most despised figures of our time from anti-colonial bombers in Algeria , to left-wing extremists like Carlos the Jackal and right-wing dictators like Slobodan Milocevic. At the height of his career, he disappeared for an eight-year period and refused to disclose where he had been. Then reappeared to continue where he left off, defending ever-more controversial clients including, Magdalena Kopp, Nazi lieutenant Klaus Barbie and Tarek Aziz (Saddam Hussein's Vice President).
In TERROR'S ADVOCATE Barbet Schroeder turns his lens upon France 's most notorious lawyer, Verga's, who first came to prominence during Algeria รข€™s struggle for independence in the fifties. He defended Djamila Bouhired, the woman who planted the bomb at the Milk Bar, an incident famously dramatised in the film The Battle of Algiers. Verga's fell in love with Bouhired while she was in jail; the couple later married and had two children.
Schroeder's penetrating investigation of the enigmatic Verga's leads us towards some shocking revelations. TERROR'S ADVOCATE plays out like a gripping detective story, where the mysteries and the characters seem larger than life, but are all the more dramatic for being real.
"Jaw-Dropping¦Schroeder's astonishing new documentary¦one of the most engaging, morally unsettling political thrillers in quite some time, with the extra advantage of being true.
- A.O. Scott, THE NEW YORK TIMES
Born in Tehran , Iran to a Swiss geologist father and a German-born, non-practicing physician mother, Barbet Schroeder spent his formative years travelling with his family, spending a key part of his childhood in Colombia . When his parents divorced when he was 11, he settled in France and gradually became enamoured with motion pictures. Before age 30, Schroeder had several careers, including critic for Cahiers du Cinema, a photojournalist, and jazz impresario. In 1962, he and Eric Rohmer formed Les Films du Losange, a production company that oversaw Rohmer's films, beginning with the short, La Boulangere de Monceau (1962), which Schroeder narrated.
After producing, appearing in and assisting with several other New Wave films and directors like: Jacques Rivette, R.W. Fassbinder, Wim Wenders and Michael Haneke amongst others, Schroeder began directing his own work with More, and has since made a variety of narrative and documentary films. They include: General Idi Amin Dada: Autoportrait, Maitresse, Barfly, Single White Female, Kiss of Death, Desperate Measures, Our Lady of the Assassins, and Murder by Numbers. Barbet Schroeder's REVERSAL OF FORTUNE was nominated for Best Director at both the Oscar and at the Golden Globe in 1991
Using the tried and tested talking heads documentary format, Barbette Schroeder shapes a backwards glance at the life and work of Jacques Verges, lawyer and representative for a wide group of disparate 'left-wing terrorists' (Carlos the Jackel), dictators (Slobodan Milosevic) and ex-Nazis (Klaus Barbie). I thought that Schroeder could have done more to trace the connections between the many strands of Verges life and work that he attempts to depict in his film and also perhaps been a little more innovative in formal terms. Otherwise an interesting film, which didn't add much to my knowledge of this subject, but that might be publicly informative. The film evinces a nice humour too. Its hard to see a project like this being made in Britain or America at this time, since it has so much sympathy for otherwise notorious characters, including Baader-Meinhof, the Algerian insurgency, Black September and probably also ETA, the IRA, the Shining Path Guerillas and every other violent oppositional insurgency within living memory. Its obvious that the film's politics side with Verges' viewpoint that even obviously total bastards need to be saved from the attentions of a lynch mob, but perhaps it could have been said that sometimes political criminals get caught up in the forces they've created and that their demise - think Robespierre, Hitler - is no bad thing. For instance, Verges' defence of Barbie, the Butcher of Lyon, focussed on human rights abuses committed by the French in Algeria, intimating that this was selective prosection, the judges were in no position to judge Barbie at all, since they were involved in similar crimes. Their position was no longer tenable and nor was the position of colonialists worldwide. This doesn't exactly answer the question of Barbie's guilt or innocence, but is the correct defence, of course. But his arguments weren't enough to secure Barbie's release, implying that Verges' arguments, however cogent, fell on death ears.
An interesting documentary for those interested in the recent past but often too static in terms of presentation and format.
Paul Murphy, Wells Street, London
TERROR'S ADVOCATE (CERT TBC)
(L' Avocat de la terreur)
A film by BARBET SCHROEDER
OFFICIAL SELECTION - CANNES FILM FESTIVAL 2007
LONDON FILM FESTIVAL 2007
Starring
Jacques Verga
France / 2007 / 135 Mins / In French with English Subtitles / Colour / 1:1.85 / DOLBY SR
UK RELEASE DATE: 16 MAY 2008
Opening at West End Venues and selected Cinemas nationwide
Jacques Verga's the kind of lawyer that people love to hate. Over several decades, he's made a career out of defending some of the most despised figures of our time from anti-colonial bombers in Algeria , to left-wing extremists like Carlos the Jackal and right-wing dictators like Slobodan Milocevic. At the height of his career, he disappeared for an eight-year period and refused to disclose where he had been. Then reappeared to continue where he left off, defending ever-more controversial clients including, Magdalena Kopp, Nazi lieutenant Klaus Barbie and Tarek Aziz (Saddam Hussein's Vice President).
In TERROR'S ADVOCATE Barbet Schroeder turns his lens upon France 's most notorious lawyer, Verga's, who first came to prominence during Algeria รข€™s struggle for independence in the fifties. He defended Djamila Bouhired, the woman who planted the bomb at the Milk Bar, an incident famously dramatised in the film The Battle of Algiers. Verga's fell in love with Bouhired while she was in jail; the couple later married and had two children.
Schroeder's penetrating investigation of the enigmatic Verga's leads us towards some shocking revelations. TERROR'S ADVOCATE plays out like a gripping detective story, where the mysteries and the characters seem larger than life, but are all the more dramatic for being real.
"Jaw-Dropping¦Schroeder's astonishing new documentary¦one of the most engaging, morally unsettling political thrillers in quite some time, with the extra advantage of being true.
- A.O. Scott, THE NEW YORK TIMES
Born in Tehran , Iran to a Swiss geologist father and a German-born, non-practicing physician mother, Barbet Schroeder spent his formative years travelling with his family, spending a key part of his childhood in Colombia . When his parents divorced when he was 11, he settled in France and gradually became enamoured with motion pictures. Before age 30, Schroeder had several careers, including critic for Cahiers du Cinema, a photojournalist, and jazz impresario. In 1962, he and Eric Rohmer formed Les Films du Losange, a production company that oversaw Rohmer's films, beginning with the short, La Boulangere de Monceau (1962), which Schroeder narrated.
After producing, appearing in and assisting with several other New Wave films and directors like: Jacques Rivette, R.W. Fassbinder, Wim Wenders and Michael Haneke amongst others, Schroeder began directing his own work with More, and has since made a variety of narrative and documentary films. They include: General Idi Amin Dada: Autoportrait, Maitresse, Barfly, Single White Female, Kiss of Death, Desperate Measures, Our Lady of the Assassins, and Murder by Numbers. Barbet Schroeder's REVERSAL OF FORTUNE was nominated for Best Director at both the Oscar and at the Golden Globe in 1991
Using the tried and tested talking heads documentary format, Barbette Schroeder shapes a backwards glance at the life and work of Jacques Verges, lawyer and representative for a wide group of disparate 'left-wing terrorists' (Carlos the Jackel), dictators (Slobodan Milosevic) and ex-Nazis (Klaus Barbie). I thought that Schroeder could have done more to trace the connections between the many strands of Verges life and work that he attempts to depict in his film and also perhaps been a little more innovative in formal terms. Otherwise an interesting film, which didn't add much to my knowledge of this subject, but that might be publicly informative. The film evinces a nice humour too. Its hard to see a project like this being made in Britain or America at this time, since it has so much sympathy for otherwise notorious characters, including Baader-Meinhof, the Algerian insurgency, Black September and probably also ETA, the IRA, the Shining Path Guerillas and every other violent oppositional insurgency within living memory. Its obvious that the film's politics side with Verges' viewpoint that even obviously total bastards need to be saved from the attentions of a lynch mob, but perhaps it could have been said that sometimes political criminals get caught up in the forces they've created and that their demise - think Robespierre, Hitler - is no bad thing. For instance, Verges' defence of Barbie, the Butcher of Lyon, focussed on human rights abuses committed by the French in Algeria, intimating that this was selective prosection, the judges were in no position to judge Barbie at all, since they were involved in similar crimes. Their position was no longer tenable and nor was the position of colonialists worldwide. This doesn't exactly answer the question of Barbie's guilt or innocence, but is the correct defence, of course. But his arguments weren't enough to secure Barbie's release, implying that Verges' arguments, however cogent, fell on death ears.
An interesting documentary for those interested in the recent past but often too static in terms of presentation and format.
Paul Murphy, Wells Street, London
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