Avocat de la terreur, L' (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:

Stasi | Defense Lawyer | Incognito | French Colony | Legal Trial

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:

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

Filming Locations:

Algiers, Algeria

Company:

Canal+ [fr]

Movie Connections:

Features Battaglia di Algeri, La (1966)

A fascinating documentary, even though it remains unclear where the director stands

In the movies lawyers have often been depicted as honest guys who try to do their best to defend their client, but also as vicious fellas who do the job just for money or fame, even if that implies having dangerous clients (the culmination of such a concept was Taylor Hackford's The Devil's Advocate). And somewhere in between we can put Jacques Vergès, the French attorney around whom Barbet Schroeder has constructed his new film, the documentary Terror's Advocate.

The title derives from the case that made Vergès famous at the beginning of his career: he was asked to defend a group of terrorists, responsible for a series of killings in Algeria. Of course, these men and women claimed to be freedom fighters, that what they did was the right thing to do. Vergès shared their ideals, managed to get them all out of jail and even married one of them. Subsequently he was always hired for controversial cases, and always ended up winning, even when his clients were former Nazis or Holocaust deniers.

The point of the movie is this: what should people think of Vergès? In fact, the opening caption says: "This film represents the director's personal point of view on Jacques Vergès", yet ironically Schroeder's opinion is not clear. While he seems to agree with the titular lawyer in the first half, saying that the Algerian terrorists had good intentions but used the wrong means (and it is hard not to think likewise, especially after seeing Gillo Pontecorvo's The Battle of Algiers, based on those events), he does not directly express his feelings on Vergès' supposed ties with numerous German terrorists, some of which were involved in the 1972 Olympic Games massacre in Munich.

As a consequence, the ambiguous attorney never really comes off as either good or bad: he does seem to have some kind of moral standards (when asked if he would have defended Hitler, he answers: "I'd even defend Bush, but he would have to plead guilty") and claims he has just been doing his job the whole time, but he refuses to comment on his alleged connections with German criminals, spreading no further light on the matter, nor does he reveal exactly what happened during his 12-year "disappearance", which he apparently spent in Paris for purposes unknown.

Nonetheless, it shows that Vergès has two essential qualities for a good lawyer: charisma and eloquence. And he knowingly uses those tools while being interviewed, providing valuable insight on a previously unseen side of the legal system and making Terror's Advocate an intriguing picture, although clearly not to everyone's taste.