Matt Sarnecki’s documentary begins with the murder of a crusading Slovak reporter and takes us through the extraordinary aftermath. Ján Kuciak was a dogged investigative scribe, digging up dirt on his country’s most prominent gangsters, as well as their partners in the “legitimate” realms of business and politics. The 2018 assassination of Kuciak and his fiancée was surely intended as a warning to Slovakia’s media establishment, but in fact it had the opposite effect: cross-publication cooperation in an all-out effort to expose the guilty parties.
The story of that endeavour is rich indeed: among its lurid ingredients are hidden thumb drives, widespread sexual blackmail, massive corruption, and the coordination of homicide via emoji-laced text messages. As it moves from Kuciak’s murder through the ensuing revelations and their seismic political impact, Sarnecki’s work holds the fascination of a bonafide page-turner.
[A] riveting true crime tale. As an exposé, it’s explosive. As journalism, it’s watertight.”—Pat Mullen, POV Magazine
Media Partner
Denmark
2022
In Slovak and English with English subtitles
Book Tickets
Missing VIFF? Check Out What's Playing at the VIFF Centre
Day of Wrath
Anna, the young second wife of a well-respected but much older pastor, falls in love with her stepson when he returns to their small seventeenth-century village. Stepping outside the bounds of the village's harsh moral code has disastrous results.
House of Hope
"House of Hope" is the name of a Waldorf elementary school near Jerusalem in the occupied West Bank, founded by Manar and her husband Milad. This documentary follows their efforts to go about their lives before, during, and after the events of October 7.
NAZA
NAZA is a codeword euphemistically used by Israeli intelligence to indicate the number of civilians it expects will be killed in an airstrike. This chilling documentary exposes the policy and process of state-sanctioned mass killings.
You Had to Be There
In a strange quirk of fate, the legendary Toronto '72 production of the musical comedy Jesus hit Godspell launched a constellation of comedy stars, all unknown at the time but now known to us as Martin Short, Eugene Levy, Dave Thomas, Victor Garber, et al
Atonement
A former Marine suffering from PTSD seeks a meeting with the Iraqi family to which he did great wrong ten years earlier in the Gulf War. Atonement navigates challenging, politically-charged psychological territory with diligence and sensitivity.
The Sandbox
Borders are the faultlines of the world. Kenya-Jade Pinto's doc examines how modern surveillance technology, bio-metrics and AI are combining to make land and sea borders as impenetrable as air travel, and suggests the unspoken cost is our own humanity.
Credits
Executive Producer
Drew Sullivan, Paul Radu
Producer
Signe Byrge Sørensen
Cinematography
Anna Smoroňová
Editor
Janus Billeskov Jansen
Original Music
Kristian Eidnes Andersen
Director
Matt Sarnecki
Matt Sarnecki is a journalist, producer, and film director at the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project. His documentary Killing Pavel (2017), about the murder of investigative journalist Pavel Sheremet, won the Investigative Reporters and Editors Medal in 2017 and the 2018 Documentari, Inchieste, Giornalismi Award in the Investigative Medium category. He spent several years working in television and documentary in New York and has produced and directed series for VICE and Powder.com. Sarnecki has a Master’s degree in Journalism from the University of California, Berkeley, and has lived in Bucharest, Romania since 2013.