Costa-Gavras

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The newly appointed CEO of a giant European investment bank works to hold on to his power when an American hedge fund company tries to buy out his company.Read More »

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Costa-Gavras might be the European filmmaker most influential on American directors of the 1970s. Although this honor often goes to Jean-Luc Godard and other compatriots of the Nouvelle Vague, films like The French Connection, The Parallax View, or Blow Out are most clearly engaged with a clamorous mode of political cinema that’s as fundamentally enraged as it is delicately assembled. Typically, Costa-Gavras’s Z is credited as the key film in this regard, not simply for its humanistic, injustice-as-thriller construction, but also for the way it “opened up critical perceptions,” as Armond White states it, for filmmaking’s lasting cultural effects. Such an assessment is backed by historical fact, but one would be remiss to overstate the terrain for Costa-Gavras, since none of the director’s subsequent films received a similar degree of accolades, either from filmmakers or critics. The neglect is easier to ascertain once it’s understood just how different The Confession is from its predecessor, a nearly two-and-a-half-hour film that shirks the frantic chase sequences of Z by dialing back its proceedings to a nearly singular setting, literally within the confines of Czechoslovakian torture camp, but more figuratively within the mind and body of Anton Ludvik (Yves Montand), a high-ranking communist official held prisoner by Stalinist extremists.Read More »

Synopsis
In a South American country, a US official, Michael Santore, is kidnapped by left-wing guerrillas. His captors accuse him of being a CIA agent, responsible for training the local police in techniques of torture and anti-sedition. As the guerrillas attempt to extract a confession from Santore, the authorities, headed by an extreme right-wing government, are closing in on them… Read More »

Synopsis
Gérard has been a loyal supporter of communism for all his adult life, serving in the French Resistance during the Second World War and supporting the civil war in Spain. Now, in 1951, he is the deputy minister for foreign affairs in Czechoslovakia. One day, he discovers that he is being followed, and, shortly after he is arrested and taken away to a makeshift prison. Without knowing why he has been arrested or who his captors are, Gérard is ordered to confess to his crimes against the State…Read More »

The head of a giant European investment bank desperately clings to power when an American hedge fund company tries to buy them out.Read More »

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A pulse-pounding political thriller, Greek expatriate director Costa-Gavras’s Z was one of the cinematic sensations of the late sixties, and remains among the most vital dispatches from that hallowed era of filmmaking. This Academy Award winner—loosely based on the 1963 assassination of Greek left-wing activist Gregoris Lambrakis—stars Yves Montand as a prominent politician and doctor whose public murder amid a violent demonstration is covered up by military and government officials; Jean-Louis Trintignant is the tenacious magistrate who’s determined not to let them get away with it. Featuring kinetic, rhythmic editing, Raoul Coutard’s expressive vérité photography, and Mikis Theodorakis’s unforgettable, propulsive score, Z is a technically audacious and emotionally gripping masterpiece.Read More »