“Kompromat: The Power of Lies” is many things: first and foremost, a nasty secret service thriller, a prison drama and a tense psychological and legal thriller. It’s also a tough survival adventure and, in a way, a true crime film. According to the author of these lines, director and screenwriter Jérôme Salle has succeeded very well in combining all these elements into an exciting, intense overall work. It is a pity that “Kompromat” was not released in cinemas in this country, but was only released directly for home cinema and therefore remained somewhat under the radar of many film lovers. ‘Kompromat’ should be much better known – also because it is based on a shocking true story.
“Kompromat: The Power of Lies” will be broadcast today, September 25, 2023 at 10:15 PM on ZDF. The station offers a repeat on the night of September 26 to 27 at 12:20 AM. If the dates do not suit you, you can stream the film in the ZDF media library after the first broadcast. Or you can simply purchase the Blu-ray or DVD:
In addition to “Public Enemy No. 1” star Gilles Lellouche, Polish Joanna Kulig from the Oscar candidate “Cold War – The Latitude of Love”, Louis-Do de Lencquesaing (“Return To Seoul”), Elisa Lasowski from the upcoming Godzilla series “Monarch: Legacy”. Of Monsters” and Russian actors Michael Gor (“Hunter Killer”) and Aleksey Gorbunov (“The Möbius Affair”) are on the cast list.
“Kompromat” on ZDF: that is the story
Mathieu Roussel (Gilles Lellouche) is a Frenchman who works as a language teacher in the Siberian city of Irkutsk. One day he comes home after class as usual and is arrested by brutal government officials in the presence of his shocked daughter. Apparently he has fallen out of favor for some reason and is now the victim of a so-called “Kompromat”.
This is a tactic of the Russian secret service FSB, which uses, among other things, unwanted politicians, opponents of the regime and potential enemies of the state to be made submissive or taken out of circulation with the help of forged, seriously incriminating documents. As Roussel learned, he is accused of distributing images and videos with pedophile content over the Internet.
Due to the overwhelming evidence, the actually innocent man is sent to a pretrial detention prison with the prospect of life imprisonment in a labor camp. Roussel’s lawyer (Michael Gor), helpless before the prosecutor, explains to him that he has only one chance: he must somehow get out of prison and go to France on his own…
‘Kompromat’ is based on a true story
Even if it were a completely fictional story, ‘Kompromat: The Power of Lies’ would be a suspenseful thriller. However, the fact that the film is heavily inspired by true events is what makes it so emotionally compelling. Imagine if a story like this happened to you just because the government of the country you are in doesn’t like you.
Almost exactly what happened to the film’s main character happened in 2015 to Frenchman Yoann Barbereau. The then director of the Siberian branch of the Alliance Française (an organization that aims to spread the French language worldwide) was accused of pedophilia and imprisoned on fabricated evidence. In 2016 he managed to escape and go into hiding. Only after a fourteen-month, extremely difficult escape journey did he arrive in his native city of Nantes.
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Source : Film Starts
I am Dawid Malan, a news reporter for 24 Instant News. I specialize in celebrity and entertainment news, writing stories that capture the attention of readers from all walks of life. My work has been featured in some of the world’s leading publications and I am passionate about delivering quality content to my readers.
