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| La question humaine |
A masterful contemporary thriller from France, Nicolas Klotz's astonishing new film will reverberate with audiences.
First screened at this year's Cannes Film Festival in the Directors Fortnight - and at a swag of international film festivals since - it has stirred fervent debate about how the past intrudes on the present.
Simon, a human-resources manager of a German-owned petrochemical corporation in France, is assigned the task of secretly investigating the company's director, Mathias Jüst, by the company's liberal deputy director, Karl Rose. Weighing up a possible power struggle between the two men, Simon decides to use Jüst's passion for classical music to get closer to him, but his own perception becomes clouded when his investigation uncovers a culture of denouncement and surveillance that leads back the Nazi era.
In a dazzling performance, Mathieu Amalric plays Simon as a well-dressed 'corporate terminator', a consummate professional out of his depth in a labyrinthine past and with the machinations of the present, oblivious to the damage caused to his own soul. As Mathias Jüst, Michael Lonsdale gives one of his greatest performances, a captain of industry trapped by the juggernaut of history.
An astonishing film, a genuine tour-de-force and a brilliant meditation on the corrosive effects of history.
We are delighted to welcome Nicolas Klotz from Paris. Australian Premiere
