L'avocat de la terreur (2007)

Director:

Barbet Schroeder

Release Date:

12 October 2007 (USA)

Genre:

Documentary | Biography | History

Tagline:

Dictators. Terrorists. War Criminals. Meet the man who defended them all.

Plot:

A documentary on Jacques Vergès, the controversial lawyer and former Free French Forces guerrilla who has defending unpopular figures such as Nazi war criminal Klaus Barbie and Holocaust denier Roger Garaudy.

Plot Keywords:

Nazi | Anti Colonial | Radicalism | Khmer Rouge | Historian

Awards:

2 wins & 1 nomination

Cast

Jacques Vergès	...	Himself
rest of cast listed alphabetically:
Bassam Abu Sharif	...	Himself
Klaus Barbie	...	Himself (archive footage)
Abderrahmane Benhamida	...	Himself
Djamila Bouhared	...	Herself
Bachir Boumaâza	...	Himself
Maître Brahimi	...	Himself
Louis Caprioli	...	Himself
Carlos	...	Himself (voice)
Nuon Chea	...	Himself
Isabelle Coutant-Peyre	...	Herself
Jean-Paul Dollé	...	Himself
Zohra Drif-Bitat	...	Herself (as Zohra Drif)
Guillaume Durand	...	Himself (archive footage)
Lionel Duroy	...	Himself
Claude Faure	...	Himself
David Flinchheimer	...	Himself
Horst Franz	...	Himself
Rolande Giraud-Arnaud	...	Herself
Tep Khunal	...	Himself
Hans-Joachim Klein	...	Himself
Magdalena Kopp	...	Herself
Alain Marsaud	...	Himself
Gilles Menage	...	Himself (as Gilles Ménage)
Claude Moniquet	...	Himself
Colonel Raymond Muelle	...	Himself
Anis Naccache	...	Himself
Karim Pakradomi	...	Himself
Yacef Saadi	...	Himself (as Yacef Saâdi)
Barbet Schroeder	...	Récitant / Narrator (voice)
Oliver Schröm	...	Himself
Siné	...	Himself
Mahab Suleiman	...	Himself
Martine Tigrane	...	Herself
Patricia Tourancheau	...	Herself
Neda Vidakovic	...	Herself
Tobias Wunschik	...	Himself

Also Known As:

Terror's Advocate (USA) (new title)

Runtime:

France:135 min

Country:

France

Language:

French | German | English | Khmer

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

1.85 : 1

Sound Mix:

Dolby Digital

Certification:

France:U | Switzerland:12 (canton of Geneva) | Switzerland:12 (canton of Vaud) | Canada:14A | USA:Unrated | Sweden:15 | Brazil:12

Filming Locations:

Algiers, Algeria

Company:

La Sofica Uni Etoile 3

Quotes:

Jacques Vergès: I was asked "Would you defend Hitler?" I said "I'd even defend Bush! But only if he agrees to plead guilty."

Movie Connections:

Features La battaglia di Algeri (1966)

An iconoclastic rebel

This movie gives an astonishingly revealing picture of the outspoken French lawyer Jacques Vergès, who defended such controversial figures as the terrorist Carlos, the Nazi criminal Klaus Barbie or a member of the Algerian resistance against French rule, Djamila Bouhireb. Jacques Vergès even confirms that he would have defended Adolf Hitler IF he pleaded guilty (George Steiner did it in his formidable book 'In Bluebeard's Castle').

The movie reveals also the existence of a right-wing - religious financial network which provides judicial help for former fascists, like Nazi criminals. However, Barbet Schroeder could not uncover the exact nature of Jacques Vergès's pro-Palestinian actions or his support of the Red Khmer regime (on which he gives here, again controversially, a more or less positive comment) during the years of his life when he acted 'behind the scenes'.

This movie is a fascinating portrait of an iconoclastic rebel with a formidable intelligence and a profound analyzing capacity of the dark regions of man's nature and the amoral or immoral motives behind his behavior. By incorporating this behavior in a global context of 'a world at war, a resistance to a colonial rule or a defense of minorities', he could (can) denounce all the parties involved or attack frontally the existing global world order and its alleged morality. A must see.