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LeMonde
21-05-2025
- LeMonde
The Marseille police tried to set up a drug lord with 360 kilos of cocaine. The operation ended in total fiasco
"Imagine if an article comes out saying that Ofast [France's national anti-narcotics agency] imported narcotics into French territory and some people helped themselves (...) by selling the product through their own informants." On March 22, 2024, during a phone call with his wife, Hervé (his name has been changed) summed up, in a few words, the case that has been shaking the Marseille branch of Ofast for a year. The revelations of this 60-year-old locksmith and police reservist are at the origin of a vast investigation filled with pitfalls, legal breaches and twists. At its core: the creation of a cocaine trafficking network from scratch, informants paid in kilos of product, the handling of drugs and dirty money – all under the very lenient oversight of local anti-drug police chiefs. All of it was in the hope of a career-defining bust to take down Mohamed Djeha, aka "Mimo," one of the biggest drug traffickers in France. The Marseille police crossed one red line after the other. They thought they had cleverly turned this extraordinary and appalling case into a routine corruption one: a handful of rogue officers, a few missing blocks of drugs, "business as usual." But over the course of a more than 3,000-page case file, which Le Monde was able to review, the investigation conducted by France's internal police oversight body, the IGPN, and now under the authority of the national jurisdiction for organized crime, revealed a different reality. At the end of 2022, the American Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) provided Ofast with first-hand information: a shipment of several hundred kilos of cocaine was set to cross the Atlantic, hidden among two containers of bananas destined for Marseille. The Colombian exporter, operating through an import-export company, was a seasoned trafficker, well-known to American investigators.
Yahoo
16-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
‘Case 137' Director Dominik Moll on Exploring the Gilets Jaunes Riots in His Cannes-Premiering Political Drama: ‘These Divisions Still Exist' in French Society
Dominik Moll, the Cesar-winning French director whose film 'Case 137' world premiered in competition at Cannes on Thursday evening, talked about the timeliness of his movie which tackles police misconduct through the prism of a meticulous investigation. 'Case 137' is set during France's yellow vests protests and centers on a young man who gets injured by by a flash-ball projectile. Léa Drucker, who is also at Cannes with Laura Wandel's 'Adam's Sake,' stars in 'Case 137' as an investigator in the French IGPN (internal affairs) department who is assigned the task of determining who is responsible for the incident. More from Variety São Paulo's Film Cash Rebate Delivers Early Wins, Sets Stage for 2025 Edition Brazil's Trailblazing Film-TV Org Spcine Turns 10 'Left-Handed Girl' Review: Sean Baker Collaborator Shih-Ching Tsou's Solo Debut Pulses Like Taipei After Dark Moll started working on the project years ago, during the violent Gilets Jaunes protests that rocked the country in 2018 and 2019 as a vehicle to probe divides in French society. Yet, the film wasn't meant to be a bombshell political thriller as was Ladj Ly's 'Les Miserables' or Romain Gavras' 'Athena,' to name a couple French movies looking at police brutality. 'I don't like the idea of a film 'coup de poing,'' said Moll. 'What I like to do is try to explain how an institution works.' Speaking of the backdrop of the Gilets Jaunes riots, Moll said: 'It was a period that eroded political power and led to reactions and overreactions in terms of the deployment of law enforcement. It's a movement that really exposed the divisions that exist in French society, particularly between the big cities and Paris, and small towns or rural areas where many people feel invisible and ignored, or where public services are declining. It was quite symptomatic of that.' 'Now, it feels like it's very far away, but these divisions still exist, and it seemed like a good way to talk about them, especially since the Gilets Jaunes movement is now really part of French history. I think it's important to tackle issues like this,' Moll continued. The film marks Moll's follow up to 'The Night of the 12th' which charted a police investigation surrounding the gruesome murder of a young woman. The film struck a chord in France and won an impressive six prizes at the Cesar Awards, including best film, director and adapted screenplay for Moll and Gilles Marchand, as well as promising actor for Bastien Bouillon. Drawing a parallel between the two movies, Moll said 'The Night of the 12th' 'really made me want to continue my interest in police institutions and how they work.' 'The advantage of police investigations is that you can work on cases from the field, with all the tension and suspense, etc. and you can also slip in other themes,' said Moll. 'In 'The Night of the 12th, it was violence against women. Here, it's more about police violence during law enforcement operations, but through a police investigation conducted by the IGPN, the police watchdog. That's what interested me. I felt there was material for fiction in seeing police officers investigating other police officers.' Caroline Benjo, who produced both 'Case 137' and 'The Nights of the 12th,' with Carole Scotta at Haut et Court, said both movies are 'clearly restorative.' ''The Night of the 12th' was 'a very harsh film, even a little grim and very graphic, and yet it felt cathartic,' Benjo said. 'I feel that with Dominique, the way he invests in spaces (…) which are the grey areas. It's these grey areas, those of nuance and complexity, that we have completely abandoned, when in reality they are the ones we absolutely must reconnect with,' said the producer. 'Case 137' has been critically lauded, with Variety's review describing it as a 'starkly effective' and 'riveting police procedural,' and praising Drucker's 'superb' performance as a 'dogged inspector investigating an egregious case of riot police misconduct.' Before its premiere, 'Case 137' sparked some headlines after news broke that one of its supporting actors, Theo Navarro-Mussy, had been banned by the Cannes Film Festival organizers from walking the red carpet amid accusations of rape and sexual assault. 'Case 137' is represented internationally by of Variety New Movies Out Now in Theaters: What to See This Week Emmy Predictions: Talk/Scripted Variety Series - The Variety Categories Are Still a Mess; Netflix, Dropout, and 'Hot Ones' Stir Up Buzz Oscars Predictions 2026: 'Sinners' Becomes Early Contender Ahead of Cannes Film Festival
Yahoo
15-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
‘Case 137' Review: Dominik Moll's Riveting Police Procedural Places Good Cop and Bad Cop on Opposite Sides
'Why does everyone hate the police?' It's a fair and earnest question, lobbed halfway through 'Case 137' by 12-year-old Victor (Solan Machado Graner) at his mother Stéphanie (Léa Drucker) — who has a hard time coming up with a satisfactory answer, not least because she's in the police herself. 'It's not a likable job,' she eventually admits. 'Enforcing the law doesn't make you friends.' He doesn't know the half of it. Stéphanie is no standard cop, but an investigator in the French IGPN (internal affairs) department, making professional enemies left and right as she investigates various cases of police brutality and misconduct — while outside the force, she finds herself tarred by the same ACAB brush as those she's bringing to account. Not that Dominik Moll's clear-eyed, fuss-free and entirely gripping procedural drama asks viewers to shed any tears for her: Personal integrity ultimately counts for little in service of a crooked institution. After a few years off the French auteur A-list, Moll enjoyed a surge in acclaim (and swept last year's César Awards) with his 2023 film 'The Night of the 12th' — an ostensibly straightforward true-crime policier that revealed more intricately ambiguous moral layers as it unfolded. It was a more sober and stringent genre exercise than the playful Hitchcock homages with which he made his name in the early 2000s, and the change evidently agreed with him. 'Case 137,' premiering as Moll's first Cannes competition entry since 2005's 'Lemming,' ventures even more tautly into pure procedural territory, probing one fictional (but compositely fact-inspired) case involving corrupt Search and Investigation Brigade (or BRI) officers to the very bitter end, with little in the way of sensationalism or sentimentality, but a surprisingly pointed sidebar on cat videos. More from Variety São Paulo's Film Cash Rebate Delivers Early Wins, Sets Stage for 2025 Edition Brazil's Trailblazing Film-TV Org Spcine Turns 10 'Left-Handed Girl' Review: Sean Baker Collaborator Shih-Ching Tsou's Solo Debut Pulses Like Taipei After Dark The result should play at least as well with local and international audiences as 'The Night of the 12th' did, given the universal resonance and topicality of its skeptical stance regarding the police — and thanks in no small part to an anchoring performance of substantial complexity and bone-weary humanity by the reliably compelling Léa Drucker. Her character is introduced briskly questioning one officer accused of undue violence while performing crowd control at the populist yellow-vest protests that erupted throughout France in late 2018. He snapped after 15 years of clean and dutiful service, he admits, before begging Stéphanie not to strip him of his job. 'Policing is all I can do,' he pleads. The question of whether he really can do that hangs in the air. Either way, he's one of many such cases, with the IGPN overwhelmed by the steady influx of complaints stemming from the protests: Laurent Rouan's sharp, disciplined editing files multiple interviews and lines of inquiry into a combined, mounting sense of institutional crisis. If Stéphanie tends toward sympathy with her accused colleagues as she investigates them, her next assignment tests that impulse, as distraught mother and nursing auxiliary Joëlle (Sandra Colombo) claims her 20-year-old son Guillaume was shot in the head, wholly unprovoked, by unidentified BRI officers on a day trip to Paris, leaving him with life-changing injuries. The victim's family and friends are unconvinced that Stéphanie can do much to bring the perpetrators to justice — 'Like you'll believe my word against theirs,' mumbles pal and witness Remi (Valentin Campagne) — and Moll's cool overview of the systemic workings of 'the police's police' rather justifies their caginess. But the accusation nags at Stéphanie more than most that come across her desk, perhaps in part because she shares a hometown with the family, but more because the extreme evasiveness and defensiveness of the BRI brass she interviews in her preliminary investigation give her every reason to suspect very foul play. Working against her is the relatively high public regard for the BRI in the wake of their response to the 2015 Bataclan attack — even officers accused of vicious brutality get a round of hero's applause when brought out of custody — and an us-against-them approach to her department by seemingly all other police factions. Her ex-husband and his new girlfriend, both cops, treat her with disdain: 'Your half-assed enquiries smear the whole force,' fumes the latter. Damning video evidence of the officers' identity and their guilt eventually surfaces courtesy of a chance eyewitness ('Saint Omer' star Guslagie Malanda, in a brief, blistering turn) who's initially wary of coming forward — caustically pointing out to Stéphanie that many Black and Arab victims of police violence don't get as much due process as the white victim in this instance. Even with the video secured, however, the case is far from open-and-shut legally: The thin blue line gets awfully blurred as Stéphanie runs into infuriating technicalities and roadblocks from higher-ups. Drucker, initially a crisp, headstrong presence, turns increasingly brittle and recessive as the wheels of injustice turn, seemingly internalizing another, more ruthless question she gets asked in the course of her investigation: 'You do your job well, but what use is your job?' Humor and texture come via glimpses of her home life as a single mother, with Machado Graner (brother of 'Anatomy of a Fall' breakout Milo) excellent as the testy, vulnerable Victor, an early adolescent just beginning to see his parents and their profession through more jaded eyes. An adorable stray kitten introduces an unexpected note of cuteness, leading Stéphanie into the joys of online cat videos, though her father cautions against such distractions in life: 'When everyone's brainwashed and democracy's dead, you'll regret watching so many kitties.' Intelligent, drily seething and duly enraging in turn, 'Case 137' keeps its mind strictly on the job. Best of Variety The Best Albums of the Decade
The Guardian
15-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Dossier 137 review – tense gilets-jaunes thriller divides cop's loyalties over police brutality
Dominik Moll's Dossier 137 is a serious, focused, if slightly programmatic movie about police brutality in France; there are docu-dramatic storytelling reflexes and a determined procedural tread. The movie takes its cue from the horrifying real-life cases of gilets-jaunes protesters in France's 2019 demonstrations who suffered near fatal injuries due to the police's trigger-happy use of the LBD gun: the lanceur de balle de défense or 'flash ball' gun which (deafeningly) fires vicious rubber bullets. Stéphanie, played by Léa Drucker, is a conscientious police officer in the IGPN, the Inspection Générale de la Police Nationale, effectively the Internal Affairs bureau, investigating horrific head injuries suffered by a teen protester, which could only be caused by the cops' flash-ball weapons. She is divorced from a cop, Jérémy (Stanislas Merhar) who along with his new girlfriend – also in the police – is gloweringly resentful of what he sees as her bureau's disloyal undermining of the police, and the way she is questioning the corners they (supposedly) have to cut to keep France safe, especially after the Bataclan attacks. Stéphanie's life becomes even more complicated when she realises that the injured boy is from her provincial homevtown, Saint-Dizier – exactly the kind of place where people feel left behind by the Macron elite – and when she goes back there to visit her mum, she is in danger of running into the boy's own stricken mother (Sandra Colombo). The secret connection energises Stéphanie, she gets tougher and more persistent in her quest to find the guilty cop and put him away – but the awful truth is that now she is cutting her own corners and might get investigated herself. The film is on its most solid ground when it painstakingly – almost in the narrative equivalent of real time – takes us through the process of locating the cop culprits by finding CCTV footage from the site of the attack on the teenagers and then agonisingly slowly finding other videos from cameras nearby, tracking the culprits' route until the offending officers can be identified. This succession of coolly forensic images are juxtaposed with the kind of real smartphone demo footage that is now commonplace and which gets errant police officers prosecuted. Stéphanie and her colleagues are convinced that cameras like this might be found in a luxury hotel whose rear entrance faces the crime scene – and this is to bring her into contact with a possible eyewitness: a hotel room cleaner, Alicia, played by Guslagie Malaga (best known for Alice Diop's courtroom drama Saint Omer). Moll gives Stéphanie a rather stagey and melodramatic one-on-one scene with Alicia as she begs her to help, but Alicia says that putting her head over the parapet to criticise the cops will only get her into trouble – and if the injured teen wasn't white, Stéphanie and her colleagues wouldn't care anyway. It's a bit overwrought and redundant, especially as Alicia's evidence is in fact a smartphone video that can be simply made available to the police without Alicia needing to go on the record at all. In the end, the issue of Stéphanie's tribal conflicts of loyalty – between Paris and small town, between the cops and their liberal critics – doesn't lead anywhere very challenging, and this film is nowhere near as complex as, say, Moll's award-winning psychological drama Harry, He's Here to Help from 2000, a big Cannes success in its day, but it's high-minded, valuable work. Dossier 137 screened at the Cannes film festival.
Kuwait Times
12-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Kuwait Times
Cannes Festival The films in competition
A total of 22 films have been announced in the main competition at this year's Cannes film festival, which kicks off on the French Riviera on May 13. Here is a list of the titles vying for the Palme d'Or which will be awarded by this year's jury president Juliette Binoche and her seven fellow judges including Oscar-winner Halle Berry and 'Succession' star Jeremy Strong. 'A Simple Accident' by Jafar Panahi (Iran) The repeatedly detained Iranian director, who has been banned from making films, asked organizers 'not to say anything about his movie' which is his latest act of defiance. Premieres May 20 at 1400 GMT. 'The Phoenician Scheme' by Wes Anderson (United States) A typical madcap comedy-drama by the American director about a maverick businessman, with an A-list cast including Benicio Del Toro, Scarlett Johansson, and Mia Threapleton, Kate Winslet's daughter. Premieres May 18 at 1700 GMT. 'Young Mothers' by Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne (Belgium) The Belgian brothers, who have already won the Palme d'Or for best film twice, tell the story of five young mothers staying in a maternity home in their native Belgium. Premieres May 23 at 1400 GMT. 'Alpha' by Julia Ducournau (France) Four years after winning the Palme d'Or with 'Titane', the French director presents a new film starring Iranian-French Golshifteh Farahani and Tahar Rahim about a young girl confronted with the AIDS epidemic in the 1980s. Premieres May 19 at 2030 GMT. 'Sentimental Value' by Joachim Trier (Norway) A comedy drama featuring a filmmaker trying to reconnect with his daughters from a director whose last feature 'The Worst Person in the World' also premiered in competition at Cannes in 2021. Premieres May 21 at 2030 GMT. 'Romeria' by Carla Simon (Spain) The Spanish director returns to her traumatic childhood with a family journey of a young Catalan girl in Galicia who has lost her parents to AIDS. Premieres May 21 at 1700 GMT. 'Sound of Falling' by Mascha Schilinski (Germany) A drama that brings together four women from four different generations living on the same farm. Premieres May 14 at 2030 GMT. 'Eagles of the Republic' by Tarik Saleh (Sweden/Egypt) On the brink of losing everything, Egypt's most adored actor accepts a role he can't refuse under pressure from the country's authorities. Premieres May 19 at 1345 GMT. 'The Mastermind' by Kelly Reichardt (United States) The story of an art heist set against the backdrop of the Vietnam War and the nascent women's liberation movement. Premieres May 23 at 1645 GMT. 'Dossier 137' by Dominik Moll (France) An investigator at France's IGPN agency, which probes police abuses, is charged with looking into an incident in which a police officer injures a young man during a protest. Premieres May 15 at 1630 GMT. 'The Secret Agent' by Kleber Mendonca Filho (Brazil) A political thriller set in the late 1970s, during the final years of Brazil's military dictatorship. Premieres May 18 at 1300 GMT. 'Fuori' by Mario Martone (Italy) A biopic about the Italian actor and writer Goliarda Sapienza by the Naples-born veteran director who has been a European arthouse favorite for more than 30 years. Premieres May 20 at 2000 GMT. 'Two Prosecutors' by Sergei Loznitsa (Ukraine) The maker of the 2018 'Donbass' documentary about the war in eastern Ukraine returns with a feature film about an idealistic young prosecutor working in the 1930s USSR during Stalin's purges. Premieres May 14 at 2030 GMT. 'Nouvelle Vague' by Richard Linklater (US) A drama set in 1960 Paris about the making of Jean-Luc Godard's cinema classic 'Breathless'. Premieres May 17 at 1300 GMT. 'Sirat' by Oliver Laxe (Spain) A 'road movie of misfits, of people outside society', according to Cannes Festival director Thierry Fremaux. Premieres May 15 at 1930 GMT. 'The Last One' by Hafsia Herzi (France) The French actor and director adapts Fatima Daas' eponymous novel, telling the story of the youngest member of an Algerian immigrant family who gradually frees herself from her relatives and traditions. Premieres May 16 at 1300 GMT. 'The History of Sound' by Oliver Hermanus (South Africa) A gay romance about two young men who set out to record the lives, voices and music of their American compatriots, set at the time of World War I. Premieres May 21 at 1300 GMT. 'Renoir' by Chie Hayakawa (Japan) A coming-of-age drama about resilience, the healing power of imagination and a traumatized family struggling to reconnect. Premieres May 17 at 1300 GMT. 'Eddington' by Ari Aster (US) Aster, the new master of American horror whose previous credits include 'Hereditary' and 'Midsommar', has cast Joaquin Phoenix in this story about a small-town mayor in New Mexico during the Covid 19 pandemic. Premieres May 16 at 1645 GMT. 'Die My Love' by Lynne Ramsay (Britain) The director of 'We Need To Talk About Kevin' will premiere this thriller about a young mother suffering from depression, starring Jennifer Lawrence and Robert Pattinson. Premieres May 17 at 1600 GMT. 'Mother and Child' by Saeed Roustaee (Iran) Roustaee's last feature in Cannes three years ago, 'Leila's Brothers', landed him with a prison sentence but his new film has been hailed in state-controlled Iranian media. Premieres May 22 at 1330 GMT. 'Resurrection' by Bi Gan (China) The director of 2018's 'Long Day's Journey Into Night', which was presented in Cannes, returns with a sci-fi detective movie set in a post-apocalyptic world.—AFP
