Peter Cowie
Description
Costa-Gavras puts the United States' involvement in South American politics under the microscope in this arresting thriller. An urban guerilla group, outraged at the counterinsurgency and torture training clandestinely organized by the CIA in their country (unnamed in the film), abducts a U.S. official to bargain for the release of political prisoners; soon the kidnapping becomes a media sensation, leading to violence.
7) Z
Description
A Greek pacifist leader is murdered at a rally. Despite the official police report of accidental death, a journalist's persistent questioning leads to a full-scale investigation, revealing corruption in high places.
Description
This mesmerizing debut by the great Swedish director Jan Troell (The Emigrants, The New Land) is an epic bildungsroman and a multilayered representation of early twentieth-century Sweden. Based on a series of semi-autobiographical novels by Nobel Prize winner Eyvind Johnson, the film follows a working-class boy's development, from naive teenager to intellectually curious young adult, from logger to movie projectionist to politically engaged man of...