This film screened 23rd May 2018.
A landmark political thriller, Costa-Gavras’s State of Siege reflected growing mistrust at US interventions overseas.
Yves Montand plays Philip Michael Santore, a CIA operative covertly advising the government of an unnamed pro-US Latin American country on torture techniques.
He is targeted by a militant guerrilla group and kidnapped to bargain for the release of political prisoners; the press seize on his abduction and it becomes a media sensation, leading inevitably to violence. The film acts as a critique of US sanctions for corrupt foreign dictatorships while questioning the use of violence to oppose such régimes.