Barbet Schroeder doesn’t shy away from controversial subjects, be they the barbarous dictator Idi Amin or fundamentalist monk Ashin Wirathu. This remarkably open-minded portrait of the problematic lawyer and anticolonial activist Jacques Vergès questions why someone would defend the indefensible.
Before he won acclaim for Of Gods and Men, French actor-turned-director Xavier Beauvois scored with this excellent, layered police drama, featuring an award-winning performance from Nathalie Baye.
The third of a very fruitful on-going collaboration between French director Benoît Jacquot and young actress (and great director in her own right) Isild Le Besco, this gorgeous black and white paean to a post-New Wave era is an excited and poetic exploration of a youthful, searching free spirit.
