Z
TCM, 4:00 a.m. ET
TCM has saluted the Oscars, for more than a month, by presenting Oscar-winning movies alphabetically, from A to Z – and finally, as the last movie in this very long, entertainingly random celebration, here comes Z. It’s the 1969 French-Algerian film by Costa-Gavras, it’s intensely and overtly political, and it couldn’t be more unsettlingly relevant. Originally presented during the start of the Nixon administration, it’s a drama, and a warning, about how civil liberties and democracy itself can fall if the wrong politicians, with less than noble motives and aggressively right-wing societal visions, conspire to find a way to take control of the government. Yves Montand (pictured), Irene Papas and Jean-Louis Trintignant star – but the real star of this Sixties cinematic polemic is Costa-Gavras himself, whose passion is nothing if not aggressively overt. “Any resemblance to actual events, to persons living or dead,” his film explains at the start, “is not the result of chance. It is DELIBERATE.”