Z

Costa-Gavras's Z (1969) brought the political and the popular together as few films had before. It won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film and a rare Best Picture nomination for a subtitled film, as well as the Jury Prize and a Best Actor award at Cannes. It is based on the real assassination of the Greek democratic politician Grigoris Lambrakis, and it barely bothers to disguise its target.

Yves Montand plays the doomed deputy and Jean-Louis Trintignant the examining magistrate who refuses to be steered, in an ensemble that includes Irene Papas and Charles Denner, with Trintignant's flinty, unhurried composure at its centre. Costa-Gavras drives the investigation with the momentum of a Hollywood thriller, cutting fast and scoring the action to Mikis Theodorakis's propulsive music, so that dry procedural detail builds into real political fury. The pace never lets up, and the anger never turns into speechmaking.

Released while Greece itself was under a military junta, the film became an international rallying point and the template for the politically engaged thriller; its influence runs through decades of conspiracy cinema from All the President's Men onward. It works as gripping entertainment and as uncompromising protest at the same time, and Z showed that a film could indict a dictatorship and fill a cinema on the same night. More than half a century on, it has lost none of its urgency.