Costa-Gavras is a seminal figure in French and international cinema. A master of the political thriller, he explores historical events through individual human stories, thereby involving his audience in past and contemporary traumas, from the horrors of the Holocaust through mid-century international state terrorism and totalitarianism to the current global financial crisis. With a career spanning half a century, he remains one of cinema’s most intriguing and enduring storytellers, theorists and political commentators. This collection of original essays charts and re-examines Costa-Gavras’s career from Un homme de trop (1967) to Le capital (2012). Readable and carefully researched, it will appeal to students and scholars of film, as well as fans of the director’s work.

In Uruguay in the early 1970s, an official of the US Agency for International Development (a group used as a front for training foreign police in counterinsurgency methods) is kidnapped by a group of urban guerillas. Using his interrogation as a backdrop, the script explores the often brutal consequences of the struggle between Uruguay's government and the leftist Tupamaro guerillas.

Costa-Gavras: Encounters with History explores the life and work of the director intertwined with historical and socio-political events, from the early stages of his career: emigrating to France from Greece in 1955 and first studying at the Sorbonne, then focusing on filmmaking at IDHEC, now La Fémis. He became an internationally respected director, first with his Oscar-award winning film Z (1969) and continued with a vast array of films, including his most recent work, Adults in the Room (2019). His films portray the complexities of human nature, relationships challenged by historical and contemporary socio-political issues. In this overview of the director's films, the authors shed light on his encounters with history from his youth in war-torn Greece to his later films on immigration, unemployment, global capitalistic greed, and the abuse of political and economic power in Europe. Costa-Gavras' films have spanned several decades and several continents, to combat unethical laws and injustice, oppression, legal/illegal violence, and torture. Throughout his evolution in the world of cinema for over half a century as director, writer, and producer, Costa-Gavras has told human-interest stories that entertain and inspire, and that help us better understand ourselves and a fragile, fragmented world.

Wayne (Brunel U.) analyzes The Battle of Algiers as an example of films that fall within the body of theory and filmmaking practice committed to social and cultural emancipation that emerged a decade after and was influenced by the 1959 Cuban Revolution. Then he traces the changing dialectics of the First, Second, and Third Cinema movements. Distributed in the US by Stylus. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Praise for Two Weeks in the Midday Sun -- About the Author -- Title Page -- Foreword by Martin Scorsese -- Dedication -- Two Weeks in the Midday Sun: A Cannes Notebook -- Postscript, 1997: Scorsese Goes to Dinner

In 1983 John Pilger interviewed nine remarkable people in a series broadcast on Channel 4 called "The Outsiders." He and Michael Coren, who researched the series have edited these, and added a chapter on Ken Livingstone to make this book a unique record of the outsider's contribution to society.

Crime and punishment on the dark side of French society, as reflected in the silver screen.