Dossier 51

French intelligence selects a diplomat as a target and gives him the name File 51. The object is not to find a crime but to find a weakness that will give them a hold on him. His phone is tapped, his letters are opened, everyone around him is questioned one by one, and the digging goes back to his childhood. As the file thickens, one man's entire private life is converted into index cards. Michel Deville adapted the film from Gilles Perrault's novel, and the two of them won a César for the screenplay. The whole film is shot from the point of view of the watchers; we never once see the diplomat from his own side. It screened in Un Certain Regard at Cannes.