TERROR'S ADVOCATE
aka L'AVOCAT DE LA TERREUR

Year: 2007
USA: Magnolia Pictures
UK: Artificial Eye
Cast: Jacques Verges, Klaus Barbie, Bachir Boumaâza, Guillaume Durand, Lionel Duroy, Hans-Joachim Klein, Magdalena Kopp, Gilles Menage, Anis Naccache, Barbet Schroeder
Director: Barbet Schroeder
Country: France
Language: French (English subtitles)
USA & UK: 135 mins
UK Certificate: 12A contains historical news images of political violence
USA Release Date: 12 October 2007 (Limited Release)
UK Release Date: 16 May 2008 (Limited Release)

UK Distributor

Synopsis

In TERROR'S ADVOCATE Barbet Schroeder turns his lens upon France's most notorious lawyer, Jacques Verges. He is the kind of lawyer that people love to hate. Over several decades, he's made a career out of defending some of the most despised figures of our time - from anti-colonial bombers in Algeria, to left-wing extremists like Carlos the Jackal and right-wing dictators like Slobodan Miloševic.

At the height of his career, he disappeared for an 8-year period and refused to disclose where he had been. Then reappeared to continue where he left off, defending ever-more controversial clients including, Magdalena Kopp, Nazi lieutenant Klaus Barbie and Tarek Aziz (Saddam Hussein's Vice President).

Schroeder's penetrating investigation of the enigmatic Verges leads us towards some shocking revelations. TERROR'S ADVOCATE plays out like a gripping detective story, where the mysteries and the characters seem larger than life, but are all the more dramatic for being real.