La Syndicaliste

Based on La Syndicaliste (The Union Official), a book by investigative journalist Caroline Michel-Aguirre, this brilliant French thriller tells the true story of the Irish national Maureen Kearney (Isabelle Huppert) – head trade union representative-turned-whistleblower of a French multinational nuclear powerhouse.

After denouncing top-secret deals that shook the sector, Kearney’s life is suddenly turned upside-down when she is violently assaulted in her own house. The investigation is carried out under pressure, but new elements create doubt in the minds of the investigators. At first a victim, Maureen becomes a suspect.

Director Jean-Paul Salomé says: The film naturally fell into the tradition of the great paranoid thrillers of which I am particularly fond. It tackles themes as current and burning as the place of women in the spheres of power; the importance granted to their speech; and the assumption of their madness and of their manipulative nature. The Kearney affair is the story of a whistleblower as much as it is the story of a woman in a world of men unaccustomed to seeing women risk whatever it takes to attack those at the top.