Compliance scheduled to screen at London Film Festival

Back to News ListWednesday 19 September 2012

Described as ‘possibly the most disturbing film ever made’ Compliance is one of those flicks that will long be a topic of ‘how could you sit through that?’. As traumatising as Gaspar Noe’s Irreversible but perhaps more similar to Michael Haneke’s Funny Games, Compliance is a film where entertainment doesn’t get a word in. This is a visceral attack on the audience, asking some hard hitting questions about compliance to cruelty and blind obedience. Perhaps the most disturbing aspect is the film’s rather truthful portrayal of these real-life events. Based on an incident in Kentucky in 2007, where a perpetrator, in the guise of a police officer, coerces via telephone a work team to brutalise and abuse a girl on a trumped up charge of theft. The incident was captured on CCTV, so we know that what we see on the big screen is worryingly close the truth. With more than a hint of the famed Milgram study, this film asks pertinent questions about our sense of responsibility and about the different levels of victimisation. Playing for two nights at the BFI London Film Festival this is not one for the faint hearted.

'Compliance' is on at the London Film Festival from 18 to 20 October