EXCLUSIVE: Here is the first trailer for U.S. filmmaker Matt Sarnecki’s explosive documentary The Killing Of A Journalist ahead of its international premiere as a special screening at the Czech Republic’s Karlovy Vary International Film Festival this week.
The movie explores the events surrounding the brutal murder of Slovak investigative journalist Ján Kuciak and his fiancée Martina Kušnirova in their home in 2018.
The film world premiered in HotDocs Toronto in May but its KVIFF screening marks a major date on its festival tour as it is the first time it will screen publicly in Central Europe, where the case remains sensitive.
Kuciak’s murder prompted the biggest street protests in Slovakia in its post-Communist era history and also reverberated in neighbouring countries such as the Czech Republic.
The affair took an unexpected turn when a mysterious source leaked the police case file to Kuciak’s colleagues, to reveal a web of corruption linking corrupt oligarchs, judges and law enforcement officials.
Romania-based U.S. director Sarnecki is also a lead producer at investigative reporter collective The Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) His previous works include Killing Pavel about the murder of investigative journalist Pavel Sheremet in Kyiv in 2016.
The film is produced by Danish producer Signe Byrge Sørensen at Final Cut for Real, the Copenhagen-based production company behind Oscar-nominated documentaries such as The Act Of Killing and Flee, in collaboration with OCCRP.
Tel Aviv-based documentary specialist Cinephil handles international sales.
