From its opening frame, Costa-Gavras’s political thriller Z promises to be an unflinching denunciation of authoritarianism. The kinetic camera work matches its forthright narrative of state-sponsored violence and the erosion of democracy. The Greek expatriate director’s film is loosely based on the 1963 assassination of the democratic leader Grigoris Lambrakis and although it was released in 1969, when Costa-Gavras reigned as a political storyteller, the film still has something to say today in this “golden age” for the United States.
In the flurry of Donald Trump’s executive orders, I found myself watching Z again as I contemplated how we arrived at this political moment – the polarization, disinformation, corruption and complicity by individuals and institutions that precede and abet the collapse of democracy – and what cinema can reveal at a time of censorship, deportations and protesters vilified as domestic terrorists.
