Showing @ Filmhouse, Edinburgh until Sat 3 Mar

Cyril Tuschi / Germany / 2011 / 117 mins

Transparency in government can be problematic at the best of times, but when it comes to straight-up power play, our leaders are even less willing to show us behind the scenes. The controversy surrounding Mikhail Khodorkovsky’s arrest in 2003 for fraud and tax evasion has drawn vast amounts of international media attention and Cyril Tuschi manages to peer behind the curtain in his new documentary.

Tuschi poses an interesting moral dilemma in his film. He runs through the life of Khodorkovsky, his degree in chemistry, how his Jewish faith affected his business aspirations and yet how he ended up as one of the world’s biggest oil tycoons. So really, we shouldn’t empathise with such a sizeable oligarch, but the evidence Tuschi finds which suggests that Khodorkovsky’s arrest was Putin’s way of silencing his political ambitions points the finger at the Russian administration and almost pardons Khodorkovsky. The telling factor is when Khodorkovsky, in a courtroom interview with Tuschi, explains that he has been accused of stealing so much of (his own) oil, it would require a train stretching around the earth three times simply to transport it. This film does more than just expose the fear and dishonesty behind Kremlin politics, it questions whether human rights apply to the richest industrial capitalists, no matter how much we may hate them.