In 2015, an anonymous John Doe leaked more than 11 million documents about the offshore accounts of the mega-rich. These documents shined a light on decades of tax evasion, with wealthy individuals and corporations using a series of not-technically-illegal practices to save themselves countless fortunes on their taxes. The results were astounding; the so-called Panama Papers, named for their country of origin, dominated the news cycle and kicked off a series of investigations across the globe. Just earlier this year, the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists announced that countries around the world had recouped more than $1.2 billion in back taxes and fines.
READ MORE: Watch the first trailer for Steven Soderbergh’s “The Laundromat”
The challenge with a story like this isn’t how you turn it into a movie; it’s how you distill sprawling and immensely complicated legalities into an easily digestible narrative. So who better than Steven Soderbergh and his long-time screenwriter Scott Z. Burns (“The Informant!,” “Contagion,” “Side Effects“) to make the opaque entertaining? The duo’s upcoming Panama Papers movie, “The Laundromat,” is having its world premiere at the Venice Film Festival this weekend, but for everyone else, these two short clips will set the stage for the movie that Soderbergh and Burns have prepared.
The clips are short and sweet: in one, we meet Meryl Streep‘s Ellen Martin, a retiree who recently lost her husband and, as a result, has stumbled into the most massive money shuffling scheme of the 21st Century. In the latter clip, the film’s two flashy and endlessly cheerful narrators, remind us of the ever-important distinction between “Privacy is locking the bathroom door when you want to take a pee,” Antonio Banderas‘s character suggests, to which Gary Oldman‘s character agrees. “Secrecy, on the other hand, is locking the door because what you are doing in a bathroom isn’t what people usually do.”
In interviews, Soderbergh has mentioned Stanley Kubrick‘s “Dr. Strangelove” as a significant influence on his film, and even at a brief 20 seconds, these two clips hint at the way Kubrick’s film may have influenced the tone of “The Laundromat.” This is the kind of money – and the kind of wanton greed – that shuts down a rational mind, so what better way to convey the impact of the Panama Papers than by leaning directly into that mania?
“The Laundromat” will premiere on Sept. 1 at the Venice Film Festival. It will be released on Netflix on Oct. 18.
Click here to read more of our coverage from the 2019 edition of the Venice Film Festival.
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