Every day, AlloCiné recommends a film to (re)watch on TV. Tonight: a shocking trio in a thought-provoking ecological thriller.
Three years after the moving Save or Perish, Frédéric Tellier reunited with Pierre Niney on screen in a high-tension legal thriller. Its title? Goliath.
Produced in 2021, this 120-minute feature film alerts viewers to the agricultural environment and what we eat. We follow three individuals who should never have crossed paths, but who will jostle, collide and burst into flames.
These three closely linked destinies are those of France (Emmanuelle Bercot), a sports teacher by day and a worker by night, opposed to the use of pesticides, Patrick (Gilles Lellouche), a solitary Parisian lawyer, specialist in environmental law, and finally, Mathias (Pierre Niney), brilliant and busy lobbyist, defender of the interests of an agrochemical giant.
A powerful and gripping thriller, brought to the screen by a powerful trio, which saw the light of day thanks to five years of research by the filmmaker Frédéric Tellier : “This investigative work in any case gave rise to a first version of a 70-page story with around ten characters, with the idea that it would be a mosaic film where everything would fit together to observe how the force of evil interferes with men in general.”
An essential ecological thriller
Based on a true story, Goliath is a punchy legal thriller, whose title obviously refers to the giant of the Bible against whom David fights.
Here, the colossus is none other than an all-powerful agrochemical group, represented by a Pierre Niney determined, arrogant and hateful in the role of the lobbyist, while David is played by the farmers, as well as by Gilles Lellouche who dons the robe of the lawyer.
An intense face-to-face from which we do not emerge unscathed, as revealed by the numerous reviews published on AlloCiné: “A gripping and poignant drama that will be both overwhelming and gut-wrenching.”, “Stunning, disorienting, we thought we knew but we knew almost nothing!”, “A perfectly mastered and successful scientific thriller”or even “Gilles Lellouche et Pierre Niney are monstrously talented in this gripping web which will undoubtedly disturb some big spiders.”
And it's not just AlloCiné Internet users who were won over. On its first day in theaters, Goliath topped the national box office. In total, the feature film had 779,470 admissions, a lesser success, but which has the merit of raising collective awareness.
When leaving Goliaththe leading actor in The Count of Monte Cristo had notably confided: “We hope that this can relaunch this debate and confront politicians with their lies.” Has the bet really been won?
Tonight on France 2 at 9:10 p.m.
