Kompromat: what true story is the film inspired by?

Kompromat: what true story is the film inspired by?



Kompromat: Gilles Lellouche victim of a conspiracy

Published September 2022, Kompromat is a French thriller directed by Jérôme Salle with Gilles Lellouche in the lead role. The latter plays Mathieu Roussel, head of the Alliance Française in Russia, who is arrested in front of his daughter and imprisoned. Victim of a conspiracy fomented by Russian secret services, why considered an enemy of the state, he has no choice but to escape to avoid life imprisonment.

The title of the film is a classic weapon used in Russia. These are false compromising documents intended to silence a person. As we see in the feature film, the fake documents are often grotesque, but they are enough to get rid of an individual.

Gilles Lellouche in Kompromat
Gilles Lellouche in Kompromat © SND

The true story of Yoann Barbereau

The plot of Jérôme Salle’s film is freely inspired of what Yoann Barbereau experienced in 2015. While he was director of the French Alliance in Irkutsk, Eastern Siberia, the Frenchman was a victim of kompromat. As we can see in the film, he is arrested in front of his daughter by FSB agents. Accused of committing crimes against minors, he was thrown into prison after being tortured.

After a incredible escape and after a long run, he managed to reach France in 2018. The day after his return, he was interviewed by Elise Lucet on the set of Special Envoy.

Once safe, he writes his ordeal in the novel In the prisons of Siberiapublished in 2020. The book is very successful and has been translated into several languages.

In April 2020, the administrative court ordered the French state to compensate Yoann Barbereau for the incident damage he has suffered. Indeed, the State failed in its mission to protect its agent, even though he had committed no crime.

On 20 July 2021 the European Court of Human Rights condemns Russia. We note “the violation of the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms in the proceedings between Yoann Barbereau and the Russian State”.

Although the film is loosely based on his story, Yoann Barbereau insisted on distancing himself with Jérôme Salle’s feature film. This is what he declared in a post published on his account Facebook that the film was “far from him” and that he had not been associated with the development of the feature film:

Source: Cine Serie

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