40 years of 'Z'

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, filmmaking came to be dominated by features with a distinctly political bent: Directors absorbed the tumult surrounding them and channeled it into their motion pictures.

"Z," one such picture, celebrates its 40th anniversary this year with a newly struck 35mm print and limited theatrical engagements around the country. Speaking from his home in France, director Costa-Gavras expresses both surprise and pleasure in the fact that his movie continues to strike a chord with audiences four decades later.

"I saw the movie with an audience in New York, and I was surprised to see how the audience was reacting," he says. "I had a chat with them after it, and it was very moving, because people were speaking very nicely about the movie, how they received it. … There were a lot of young people, and they were very interested about everything: Some say 'Oh, it's the situation around the world today' and so forth."

"Z" tells the story of an anonymous country in political turmoil whose world is rocked after the murder of a leftist politician by a shadowy rightist cabal. The movie is a thinly veiled attack on the military junta in Mr. Costa-Gavras' native Greece, but his skill in fashioning a thrilling film first and a searing political indictment second lent the picture added relatability to audiences around the globe.

Mr. Costa-Gavras says he is unsure whether or not such a film could be made now.

"Today, the situation has changed drastically. At the time, the position you had to have, it was very easy: to be with the Western world or the Eastern world, or somewhere in between them," he explains. "Today, it's much more difficult. The political situations around the world are so complex … today, all of the political situations come to the economy."

"Z" has endured these 40 years because people can relate to what's at stake. "It's the need we all have for justice," Mr. Costa-Gavras says. "Where there's no justice, we become very aggressive, and people, like the judge [protagonist] who risks his freedom and his job and everything just for the justice, I think people like very much to see that again. I think that's the whole thing."

It also helps that the story at the heart of the movie is so gripping; Mr. Costa-Gavras understands that audiences need to be entertained, not lectured to. "People don't go to cinema to listen to speech or political speech or a kind of university lesson, they go to [be] entertained," he says. "So I'm trying to create situations which are entertaining."