Roschdy Zem is amazing in the skin of narcotics infiltrator Hubert Avoine. State Scandal Investigation by Thierry de Peretti draws on the reality of what this former cop turned whistleblower really lived to offer the actor who was Caesarized in 2020 for Roubaix, a light of Arnaud Desplechin a very beautiful character of cinema.
It all starts with a series ofarticles published in Release, then a bookThe Infiltrator, from the hunt for Chapo Guzman to the French narcotics scandal, published in 2017 by journalist Emmanuel Fansten in collaboration with this former narcotics infiltrator. “My film is fiction although I based myself on what Hubert told me”, warns the director to 20 minutes.
A fascinating point of view
Thierry de Peretti makes endearing this character who is worried about the excesses of his superiors in the fight against drug trafficking and criticizes his employers for pacting a little too much with drug traffickers. “He gravitates between several zones and several waters, specifies the filmmaker. He is a contemporary character who carries within him an attitude from another time. Between Pio Marmaï as a journalist and Vincent Lindon as an authoritarian chief, the hero wants to make his voice heard by denouncing what he considers unfair. The film manages to make his complex situation understood without being didactic and keeps you in suspense like a successful thriller.
“I spent two years exploring the subject with Antoine and Emmanuel and discussing these themes, recalls Thierry de Peretti. I was passionate about their reports, those which unite informant and journalist, which I wanted to transcribe on screen. It is one of the innovative points of the film to explore this relationship where each uses the other in turn to bring an inconvenient truth to light. The spectator plunges into the maze of shenanigans where the motto “the end justifies the means” gives serious food for thought.
From reality to legend
“I don’t know if we will remember this case in ten years,” insists the filmmaker. But I would like Hubert to be remembered thanks to the film. “The latter, who died in 2018 of cancer at the age of 56, will not have known that he was going to be embodied by Roschy Zem. The actor transforms the reality of the disappeared infiltrator into a cinema legend. State Scandal Investigation pays him a thrilling tribute in the form of an excellent film.