Earlier this month locals in Zagreb noticed something odd outside an art deco building. Sandbags and barricades appeared in front of the Esplanade hotel, along with a film crew and extras sporting Ukrainian military uniforms. Soon afterwards the actors Sean Penn and Adrien Brody were spotted on the set in the Croatian capital, together with Doug Liman, the Hollywood director of the Jason Bourne movies.
Liman had come to shoot his latest fictional political thriller. Its subject: the 2022 Nord Stream explosions, in which a team of Ukrainian divers allegedly blew up a pipeline supplying Russian natural gas to Germany. One of the chief suspects, Volodymyr Zhuravlev, had twice eluded the Germany authorities: once allegedly slipping out of Poland in the boot of a diplomatic car, and on another occasion freed by a court.
