In 1969 I saw a film I have never forgotten, Z. It was the first film I’d seen that had a serious political message. It is about the assassination of a left wing Greek politician in 1963 by his right wing opponents and the government cover-up that ensued. The film is based on a book of the same name.
The film had a huge impact internationally and won numerous awards at film festivals. The film critic of the Chicago Sun-Times, Roger Elbert, chose Z as his film of the year and wrote:
Z is a film of our time. It is about how even moral victories are corrupted. It will make you weep and will make you angry. It will tear your guts out…When the Army junta staged its coup in 1967, the right-wing generals and the police chief were cleared of all charges and ‘rehabilitated.’ Those responsible for unmasking the assassination now became political criminals. These would seem to be completely political events, but the young director Costa-Gavras has told them in a style that is almost unbearably exciting. Z is at the same time a political cry of rage and a brilliant suspense thriller. It even ends in a chase: Not through the streets but through a maze of facts, alibis and official corruption.
It is similar to the story Bill Browder tells in Red Notice, How I Became Putin’s No. 1 Enemy. It reads like a thriller but it’s true, as Lee Childs says on the cover, and like Z it is destined to become a film.
Bill Browder’s Hermitage fund at one time was the largest foreign investor in Russia and his attempts to uncover corruption led to his lawyer being murdered while in detention in Russia and Browder’s Russian visa being revoked. Russia continues to try and extradite Browder using an Interpol “Red Notice” but his conviction, in his absence, in a Russian court on an array of unsound charges has been deemed “political”. The most recent attempt to arrest him was in Spain last month, so this story is not over and one fears that, as he says in the book, “Russian stories never have happy endings”.
Talking of fund managers, may I digress? Over a bottle of Ch. Kirwan 2000 in clubland I asked my host about the manager of a fund that we both hold. “Put it this way Christopher, I have never known him put his investors’ interests before his own.” In a funny way this is the story that Bill Browder tells about Putin’s Russia, writ large.