DIRECTOR: Costa-Gavras
PRODUCERS: Jacques Perrin, Ahmed Rachedi
PRODUCTION CO: Reggane Films, ONCIC
SCREENPLAY: Jorge Semprun. Based on the book by Vasilis Vasilikos
PHOTOGRAPHY: Raoul Coutard
EDITOR: Françoise Bonnot:
MUSIC: Mikis Theodorakis
WITH: Yves Montand (the doctor), Irene Papas (the doctor’s wife), Jean-Louis Trintignant (the magistrate), Jacques Perrin (photojournalist), Pierre Dux (the general), François Périer (public prosecutor district attorney), Charles Denner (Manuel), Georges Géret (Nick)

AWARDS: Best Actor (Jean-Louis Trintignant),  Jury Prize Cannes 1969

REVIEWS

“Winner of the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film in 1969, this swiftly-moving and effective political thriller, shot in Algeria by the Greek-born Costa-Gavras, plainly points its finger at the Colonels’ regime in Greece. Despite its topicality and its somewhat simplified treatment of complicated issues, the film’s message and passion still communicate to an audience – for although the specifics have altered, the generality of totalitarian regimes has not. Based on a novel by Vassili Vassilikos, the film is set in an unidentified Mediterranean country where support is growing for ’Z’, the leader of the pacifist opposition party. After he is killed by a passing van, the investigating magistrate is led to suspect murder when he uncovers a secret organization supported by the government and the police. The film’s tremendous popularity and critical recognition rocketed Costa-Gavras into world prominence and enabled him to continue making the kind of political thrillers that mark his specialty.”

— Harvard Film Archive

“Almost intolerably exciting. An extraordinary thriller – one of the fastest, most exciting melodramas ever made… Costa-Gavras has made something very unusual in European films – a political film with a purpose and, at the same time, a thoroughly commercial film… It derives not from the traditions of the French film but from American gangster movies and prison pictures and anti-Fascist melodramas of the forties.”

— Pauline Kael

FILM SOCIETY SCREENINGS

Hamilton    
Monday, 22 August, 8.00pm

Auckland 
Tuesday, 30 August, 6:15pm

Nelson  
Tuesday, 27 September, 6:00pm 
​
New Plymouth     
Wednesday, 12 October, 6:00pm

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French Connections is presented in
​co-operation with the Institut Français and the Embassy of France