As the eighth and final leader of the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev is one of the 20th Century’s most defining politicians, a figure equally defined by the vision of transparency that led his efforts to expand and restructure his nation, and the lost potential left in the wake of the USSR’s disintegration. Nearly three decades since his removal from power, the 87-year-old Gorbachev sits down with Herzog for a series of exclusive one-on-one conversations on his remarkable life and legacy, at a time when the former President finds himself more removed than ever from the defining ideologies of Russian leadership.

The film is both a riveting documentary and deeply humanising portrait filled with unforgettable archive plus interviews with key political players from the last thirty years. As Herzog explores the conditions of Gorbachev’s unlikely rise to power and subsequent achievements through a surprisingly candid and friendly rapport, his ever-present themes soon emerge to shape a timely study of the unstable and temporal nature of those in the world’s most powerful positions.

“With Mikhail Gorbachev… Werner Herzog has finally met his match.” – Indiewire 

The screening will be followed by a Q&A with co-director André Singer and producer Svetlana Palmer chaired by journalist and producer Carol Nahra. 

Speakers:

André Singer is a filmmaker and anthropologist. He worked for Granada Television in the 1970s on World in Action and A Disappearing World. In the 1980s for the BBC he founded the documentary series Fine Cut (which later became Storyville) where he worked as either a Commissioner, Executive or Producer with many leading filmmakers including Jean Rouch, Fred Wiseman, D A A Pennebaker, Bob Drew, Mike Grigsby and Vikram Jayanti, and where he first linked up with Werner Herzog by commissioning Lessons of Darkness. He has played a role subsequently on fourteen of Werner’s films including being Producer on Into the Inferno, The Wild Blue Yonder and Fireball. More recently as an Executive Producer and through his company Spring Films in London, Singer worked on Josh Oppenheimer’s Oscar nominated films The Act of Killing and The Look of Silence. As a director he was awarded the RTS, Peabody and an Emmy for his 2015 Holocaust film Night Will Fall and in 2017 completed the anti-nuclear film Where the Wind Blew which won the Raven Award for best feature documentary at DocUtah. His current film as co-director with Herzog is Meeting Gorbachev which will be launched in the UK in November to coincide with commemorations of the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. As an anthropologist he was President of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland between 2014 and 2018 and is currently a Professorial Associate of SOAS.

Moderator: Carole 

Tucked away deep in the heart of Russia, there is a hidden city where thousands of men, women and children live and work behind barbed-wire fences monitored by armed guards. The residents are told they are the nuclear shield and saviours of the world. They are told that everyone on the outside is the enemy. One of the most contaminated places on earth, and home to Russia’s largest stockpile of nuclear materials, this place is called CITY 40.

Built after the Second World War to create the Soviet Union’s nuclear weapons program, City 40 is one of Russia’s secret closed cities, collectively known as Z.A.T.O.

In this feature-length documentary, the film crew gets smuggled inside CITY 40 and – behind a psychological façade of normality – they encounter a single mother and a handful of other brave residents who risk their lives to warn us of the human and environmental catastrophe that threatens the region.

Directed by: Samira Goetschel
Country: USA
Runtime: 75′
https://www.facebook.com/CITY40documentary

“This is not a phone conversation…”

                                                                        – Soviet saying

Introducing his new book The Red Web: The Struggle Between Russia’s Digital Dictators and the New Online Revolutionaries at an event at the Frontline Club on Tuesday 29 September, co-author and founder of Agentura.Ru Andrei Soldatov began by saying that to understand modern Russia you must first understand the mentality and historical relationship between citizen, state and surveillance.

“The saying – ‘this is not a phone conversation,’ used by soviet citizens – is still in use today and reflects a continuity of some habits we inherited from the soviet past.”

The impact of this soviet legacy is mirrored in the methods and the principles of the FSB’s modern communication interception systems, as well as the “strange” and complicit relationship between the state military industrial complex and the telecommunications industry in Russia.

Soldatov continued: “The most important principle for the Russian system of surveillance is the back door to all Russian communications, which provides direct access to all servers, all networks on Russia soil.” The country’s revolving door policy between state and private sector results in a “complete lack of resistance, even collusion from the industry itself.”

Furthermore, said Soldatov, the “surveillance mentality” seen today derives more from the soviet approach to control, which prioritised intimidation and self-censorship, than from the use of technology.

“Russia’s system of online surveillance is not very sophisticated. The problem is that the Russian state is extremely skilful in sending a message: ‘You might be spied on… Be careful.’ And in a country with a very recent totalitarian past one needs to be only reminded of what might happen and that is enough.”

@AndreiSoldatov @irinaborogan presenting new book the Red Web in @frontlineclub #russia #putinAtWar pic.twitter.com/jI9W7OnBq0

— Agne Dovydaityte (@AgneDovydaityte) September 29, 2015

Co-author Irina Borogan acknowledged the problems of this soviet legacy and suggested that while the strategy President Putin has tried to apply to the internet is similar to that he successfully used to suppress traditional media in the early 2000s, his basic misunderstanding of how social media works post-Arab Spring leaves room for optimism.

“Once again, the Kremlin’s approach was based more on intimidation than mass oppression or technology. Putin believes that all things exist in a hierarchical structure and if you exert pressure from the top you can rule all things. But this fails to understand the internet as a network, which we all know has no centre – everyone can participate without authorisation.”

For Privacy International researcher Edin Omanovic, from the perspective of the state it is less a problem of a soviet citizen mentality than Putin’s worldview shaped by KGB/FSB surveillance policy.

“It is the narrative between how the horizontal approach to new technology is changing the world and being a force for liberation, versus how new technology is actually a force for oppression.”

Omanovic added that this is not merely a problem confined to Russia, but one that involves the billion-dollar private surveillance industry throughout the world, where cooperation between surveillance manufacturers and state defence contractors is often implicit.

The future of #Russia's internet: walking on the knife's edge – one kept purposefully obscure. http://t.co/LmzbEczf8m

— oDR (@opendemocracyru) September 14, 2015

For the BBC’s former Moscow correspondent and event moderator Daniel Sandford, while the KGB tactic to focus solely on dissident leaders and “well known trouble-makers” combined with often high levels of incompetence led to a certain lack of control, there is a concern that the FSB’s increasing professionalism – and a better organised and resourced state surveillance programme than existed in the 1970s and 80s – will see the state bring the internet under its control as it has done with other traditional media outlets.

Borogan, however, disputed this suggestion, claiming that what differentiates today from the soviet era is that “technology is getting cheaper and cheaper all the time and to install an all-powerful surveillance network throughout the entire country is ever more difficult.”

The widespread nature of internet networks will, in essence, beat Big Brother.

For Tonia Samsonova, foreign correspondent for Echo Moskvy, it is the actual goal of decision makers who are establishing the surveillance state that is the issue.

“One part of [these people] are actually working for the government, for the security of the regime, the others think of their job as a business. So one might ask what are the real goals of those guys? Are they to protect Putin, protect themselves as a class or to make as much money as they want?”

For Samsonova the danger lies not in the cynical surveillance measures of today, but in data departments and analytical models which can be used to predict issues and trends before they happen and to preemptively target potential trouble-makers.

On Monday 16 March, the Frontline Club hosted a preview screening of Masterspy of Moscow – George Blake, directed by George Carey. The film, which will be broadcast on Monday 23 March by BBC 4 Storyville, traces the life story of the legendary George Blake, a British diplomat who became a longterm double agent for the Soviet Union. Masterspy of Moscow clarifies the many myths surrounding Blake that persist, and culminates with an interview with the protagonist himself, from his cabin in the woods outside of Moscow.

Director George Carey

Following the screening, Carey began the discussion by highlighting that agents such as Blake often face serious identity crises.

“You’ve got these two lives, which you’ve got to keep separate. And you haven’t  just got to keep it separate in the sense that you don’t tell your boss what you’re doing. But you have to keep it separate from your wife, your children, and in the end from one side of your head. And it’s such a strain,” he said.

In Blake’s case, this was reinforced by his complicated, and at times unstable, background. He was raised in the Netherlands by his Calvinist mother and Jewish father with roots in both Cairo and Istanbul. After the occupation of his home country, young Blake fled to London with his mother in 1943.

The documentary narrates how the now 92-year-old former spy offered himself as a double agent to the KGB during his imprisonment in North Korea, and how he was later imprisoned for acts of treason. Blake escaped prison five year later, in 1966, and fled to Moscow where he remains to this day.

Carey explained to the audience how he tried to contact Blake’s former wife, who eventually refused to comment. Curiously, one of his sons chose a profession that Blake aspired to when he was young: he is currently a vicar in Surrey.

“But I decided not to include that. I felt the essence of the story was George himself,” Carey said.

He also underlined that aside from religion, Blake had been influenced by a strong moment of transition after the Second World War when anti-colonialist sentiment was sweeping the world.

“Who was whose spy was a very ambiguous business. What you had was the Americans, the British and the Russians, principally, in the early 1950s. All had their own staff agents and they all had their own informers. The trouble was that someone who was one of your informers (…) was probably informing somebody else as well,” Carey said.

He also pointed out that such inner frictions remain key up to the present day. Carey mentioned the recent assassination of Boris Nemtsov as one such example: “It is becoming clearer and clearer that this is because there are factions inside the FSB and the Kremlin.”

Nevertheless, Carey acknowledged that speculation is “almost axiomatic” when making a film about a spy and talking about secret intelligence services.

“You have to understand I’m just a humble old filmmaker. I do my best.” Carey said.

The young Harvard-educated economist Miklós Németh didn’t dream he would play a decisive role in the fall of the Berlin Wall when he was appointed Prime Minister by Hungary’s Communist Party to fix the nation’s finances in late 1988. Only a year later he was at the centre of it all.

On Wednesday 5 November, the Frontline Club tuned in to the world premier of 1989, a new documentary by Anders Østergaard detailing the months and days of Németh’s tense political manoeuvring that precipitated demolition of the wall, as it was shown in 57 cities across Europe during the 2014 Copenhagen International Documentary Festival (CPH:DOX).

Stitching together archival footage seamlessly with reenactments of behind-the-scenes political moves, 1989 shows how Németh’s decision to dismantle one of the biggest drains on Hungary’s budget – a 240 kilometre-long electrical fence bordering Austria – reverberated through the former communist block. Just months later, tens of thousands of East Germans were scrambling across the divide.

Post-screening, Németh joined Danish Broadcast Corperation news anchor, Lene Johansen; professor and EU analyst, Lykke Friis; Senior Advisor to the European Policy Centre, Hans Martens; and former Prime Minister of Denmark, Poul Nyrup Rasmussen, to reflect on 25 years of changes his decisions brought to Europe.

Continuing Conflict
The continuing conflict between Russia and Ukraine was at the top of the agenda. “I am a great believer in dialogue and compromise. That is the way of finding your way out of a difficult situation,” Németh said of the fighting, adding that his good rapport with Mikhail Gorbachev helped guide him through difficult times.

“Putin is not stupid. I don’t like seeing a comment or an article in the paper that now we’re facing Cold War number two. This is not cold,” Németh said. “Last month Ukraine, Russia, and the EU signed a very important contract on the gas supply. So dialogue, dialogue, dialogue.”

What we’re seeing in Russia is a generation of people who never really accepted what happened in 1989, added Hans Martens. “I think they’re striking back now,” he said. “It’s not just about Ukraine and Crimea, it’s also about trying to reestablish a kind of Soviet Union or at least an empire like that. So dialogue is very good.”

Find out more about 1989 on the film’s website, where director Anders Østergaard will answer questions submitted by audiences from audiences all over Europe participating in this simultaneous screening.

On Tuesday 16 September, the Frontline Club hosted a preview screening of Night Will Fall, followed by an insightful Q&A with director André Singer and producer Sally Angel. The powerful film interweaves eyewitness testimony and original archive footage in order to chronicle the process of the filming, by American and British and Soviet combat cameramen, of the liberation of Nazi concentration camps in 1945.

Originally commissioned to provide lasting, undeniable evidence of the Nazis’ unspeakable crimes, the film was never completed. Seventy years on, however, the Imperial War Museum has restored the filmic testimony in its intended order and under its original title, German Concentration Camps Factual Survey. Night Will Fall also explores the political context in which the production of this film was suspended.

Angel commented on her initial interest in the project, sparked by a meeting with the Imperial War Museum’s senior curator Dr Toby Haggith, who was, at that time, beginning to digitally remaster and piece together fragments of German Concentration Camps Factual Survey:

“When he started describing the footage and the story behind it, I knew that would be something that I’d want to take further and really explore that moment of liberation and the challenges of bearing witness to atrocity.”

Singer agreed on the importance of the project, and emphasised his desire to create an “experiential” film rather than a reportage dictated by historians and critics, whose detached narrating of events he later labelled “not just superfluous, but intrusive”.

“If there’s one major thing that I feel most strongly about, it’s that the film should respect that the story was something that had to be told by the people who experienced it, not by others. . . . We ended up with the right combination of characters who . . . had the right to interpret what was happening at that time for another audience, 70 years on.”

Singer then touched on the potential re-traumatisation of the film’s central witnesses, all of whom reacted emotionally during their recounting of the events of 1945.

“The trauma that you’re creating is something that preys on your mind as a filmmaker . . . yet I feel the justification is that everybody who participated in the film overwhelmingly insisted that this was an important story to tell . . . and that their own personal angst or trauma . . . contributed to show how important the project was.”

Sally Angel and Andre Singer discuss NIGHT WILL FALL following a packed preview screening @frontlineclub pic.twitter.com/Lj9cQ8SFZK

— Emma Hewitt (@EmzoH) September 16, 2014

An audience member asked whether Singer and Angel intended to produce a film about the atrocities themselves, or about the process of filming the atrocities by Allied cameramen. Singer responded:

“It’s a genuine conundrum about the direction of the film. . . . The starting point of the film was that this was going to be very different in so far as it was going to be a film about the original film, the reconstruction of that film, the importance of that film, the extraordinary role of the cameraman.”

The filmmaker continued by revealing Night Will Fall’s evolution into a wider project:

“I personally . . . got more and more absorbed by the chaos of 1945, that political cauldron that was happening . . . before and then after the end of the war, the Palestine issue, the problems in England and Germany at that time . . . are we telling a narrow story about the film itself or are we trying to paint a broader picture?”

Another audience member commented on the intensely graphic nature of the footage included, not at all habitual in previous combat footage. Singer responded:

“Atrocity footage used out of context is pornography, it has no rational or reason to be used. But put in context and explained, it can carry the message that one needs to carry. . . . Nearly 50% of the footage we were tempted to use, we pulled out of the film because we didn’t want to overwhelm. . . . I hope that we have the balance about right.”

Angel echoed this sentiment, and commented on the radical difference in the extremity of this footage in comparison with previous combat images:

“The cameramen were very aware that they were gathering evidence . . . and part of their filming close-ups was about their anger as well, . . . about making sure that the world knew what was going on.”

Singer closed the discussion with an evaluation of the educational and cautionary elements of the project, recalling the words of Richard Crossman, the future cabinet minister who pinned the emotive script for the original documentary:

“‘Unless the world learns the lesson these pictures teach, night will fall. But, by God’s grace, we who live will learn.’ . . . We see now in everything we’ve seen subsequent to World War II, in 10 or 15 different cases, that of course we haven’t learnt. The tragedy of the film lies in those words.”

Visit the BFI website to find out more information on Night Will Fall and upcoming screenings.

“Good breeding and good manners are no guarantee of loyalty.” On Friday 11 October 2013, the Frontline Club screened Philby – The Spy Who Went Into the Cold. Kim Philby acted as a Soviet double-agent while serving as chief British intelligence officer in the United States, and while heading MI6’s anti-Soviet section. The BBC Storyville preview delved into Kim Philby’s conflicted past.

Moderator Nick Fraser (L) and director George Carey (R) Photo by: George Symonds

Before the lights went down, moderator Nick Fraser introduced director George Carey:

“While I’m a mild connoisseur of, as one might be, the deviant behaviour of the British upper classes, he is a true obsessive [laughter from the audience]. If there were a Mastermind of errors and stupidities committed by the British upper classes, George would score 40 points [more laughter].”

“I’m not sure I would have written that script myself,” Carey was quick to qualify:

“I came to Philby with a slightly more open-minded view [even more laughter]. I hope you all enjoy the film.”

As the lights went up, Fraser engaged the Q&A:

“The very charming but overweight KGB man says he was a romantic who believed in Karl Marx, . . . but when you went to his lair, there was P.G. Woodhouse there, not Karl Marx. What evidence did you ever uncover that he wasn’t just trapped by the decisions in his early life, but actually continued to believe in all the plumbery of Marx and Lenin?”

“I think the two can both be true. He was certainly trapped,” said Carey.

“I think he missed lots of things about England, and I think he felt the Communism that he thought he was fighting for and had done those things for had not really delivered. . . . What puzzled me more than if he’d kept the faith or if it was a burnt out faith, was how on earth he’d got away with it. And it seemed to me he’d got away with it because everyone in that world was like him, like us. They were a gang as it were, and it was too easy.”

Many of the interviewees from the film were present in the audience. “A hopeless cause” was how one attendee described the idea of pursuing the Freedom of Information Act to find out exactly what Philby had done:

“It’s a hopeless cause to the extent that the secret service has never – and will never – disclose documents under any kind of legislation or statute as exists today, because they are in the business of keeping secrets. . . . And they have promised individuals today, yesterday and tomorrow that identities of people who have given information and cooperated will never be disclosed. So quite simply, it’s bad for business to make those kinds of disclosures.”

Fraser put it to Carey:

“You still didn’t quite explain to me in the film, though I love the film deeply, how it was he believed in all this shit for all this time. Because intelligent people like Arthur Koestler or Orwell could have set him right very early on, George.”

“Well,” responded Carey:

“Like many communists themselves, I’m sure he became disillusioned. The point is that was the side you reckoned you belonged to. You’d signed up for it. He’d committed himself to it.”

In reference to a comment on Philby being a product of his time Carey expanded:

“How on earth Philby thought his way through the Soviet–Nazi pact, given that the impetus of his spying was anti-fascist, goodness knows. But the general view amongst KGB I talked to, who kind of went through the same thing themselves was, ‘Oh well, our leader knows best,’ and ‘In the end it’s just expediency,’ ‘In the end it’s the way to defeat themselves,’ but I agree it’s a very difficult question to answer.”

“It was a kind of cast,” opined Fraser, “of upper-middle class intellectuals from places like Winchester, Eton et cetera:”

“Surely now, they would be more likely to be making a ton of money in the City with financial instruments. And the ideologies now – wholly unfashionable.”

In terms of the human cost of espionage, the film was unequivocal:

“Spies may have good causes, but few things they ever do is good.”

Upcoming documentaries on BBC Storyville can be found here.

On a stormy night in January 1963, Kim Philby, a charming Englishman with a tendency to stutter, failed to meet his wife at a dinner party in Beirut and instead defected to the Soviet Union. It was the end of a unique career, which at one time had seen this long term double agent rise to become head of the anti-Soviet section of MI6.

Veteran director George Carey captures the extraordinary story of what happened to Philby, from the moment he first came under suspicion in 1951, to his death in Russia just before the end of communism. Several people who knew him well – in London, Beirut and Moscow – talk frankly about his character, and the weaknesses in the British establishment that made his double life possible.

Directed by George Carey
Duration: 70′
Year: 2013

This screening is in partnership with BBC Storyville, the BBC’s international feature documentary strand.

On Thursday 18th April at the Frontline Club, authors Irina Prokhorova and Oliver Bullough talked about their experiences of Russia which have informed the research and writing of their two very different books.

Prokhorova’s book 1990: Russians Remember a Turning Point charts the missing year after 1989 when the Soviet empire fell apart and before 1991 when the Soviet Union was formerly dissolved.

“The close study of this period showed that all genesis of new life, just grew out of 1990. With its best achievements and worst [ . . . ] my idea was to show [ . . . ] this point of growth, the potential of the society of which probably we still don’t know enough.”

Anne Applebaum, Pulitzer Prize winner and most recently author of Iron Curtain: The Crushing of Eastern Europe 1944-56 , who was chairing the event, said that it felt that on reading the book one of the most notable points was how teachers were inspired to be creative with their curriculums. Prokhorova responded:

“I expected to find it but I was amazed how many things have been created at that time [ . . . ] we always underestimate the creativity of our own society [. . . . ] Somehow started in this period the whole basis of new life was created.”

Irina Prokhorova

While Prokhorova‘s book charts the lives of both ordinary and elite Russians at the fall of communism through interviews and documents of the time, Bullough‘s book, The Last Man in Russia and the Struggle to Save a Dying Nation, follows the story of an Orthodox Priest named Father Dmitry who throughout the sixties tried to combat the alcoholism that was commonplace throughout Russia. Bullough said:

“He attempted, in a small way because he was one man and this is a very large country, to create an alternative community in which people could trust each other [ . . . ] His theory was – and I think he was right – that the nature of a totalitarian society is that it can only survive by breaking down the bonds of trust between individuals.”

Oliver Bullough and Anne Applebaum

“So many of the dissidents, Marchenko or Sakharov…they are authentic heroes. Cast iron, 100% astonishingly brave, wonderful people and when you read about them it is inspirational. Father Dmitry is as it turns out not quite like that. In a totalitarian society heroes are a vanishing small minority; most people have to compromise. For whatever reasons, to get ahead, to get married or to get a job or to get a drink – to get anything. And once you compromise it’s difficult to stop. That is why I wanted to write about him.”

Prokhorova added:

“They have to compromise to save their lives and their loved ones.”

In contrast to Prokhorova‘s optimistic view of society flourishing throughout 1990 and hopefully into the future, Bullough offered a different opinion:

“The protests against Putin are a sign of a growing society and people are beginning to trust each other in a way that they weren’t before [. . . . ] However, the damage that has been done by vodka is so awe-inspiring. The UN estimates that the population by the middle of the century will be 116 million – it’s currently 143million. That’s a drop of about the population of Canada.”

Prokhorova added later on:

“Liberating yourself from the most horrific regime is a very painful process. You have to do quite a lot of things: psychologically, intellectually, practically. It’s very difficult to create this social fabric, I can assure you, for 20 years I’ve been trying to do it. The whole idea of survival was an individual thing [. . . . ] You have to teach people and you have to teach yourself too. We need a span of time.”

To which Bullough voiced his concern:

“There is a risk that people will become disillusioned and leave. This is something that the Soviet Union didn’t have – that it was very difficult to leave [. . . . ] The book does end in a relatively upbeat way. I’m encouraged that the new Soviet generation is much more socially active than I think I realised.”

Listen to Irina Prokhorova on how the Russian government should approach society in the future:

Watch the full discussion here:

"There’s a definite lack of leaders [today]," documentary producer Richard Symons commented to a Frontline Club audience on 8 October.  "Where are they?"

Symons had just screened the third film in his and Joanna Natasegara’s series The Price of Kings, which explores the weight of leadership.  Previous films have focused on Yasser Arafat and Shimon Peres.

One true leader, the latest Price of Kings film suggests, has been Oscar Arias, two-time President of Costa Rica.

In 1987, he famously defied American and Soviet insistence – "an incredible amount of pressure," one aide put it – that Costa Rica pick a side in the Cold War proxy battles that were tearing Central America apart.

"I had to fight Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev," Arias reflects in the film.  "It was not gonna be easy, to say to Goliath, ‘well, here’s David, little David, but we’re gonna fight for our convictions, for our principles, for our ideals."

Peace was Arias’ ideal.  With no military behind him – Costa Rica’s disbanded in 1948 – he nonetheless broke from Washington and Moscow to bring ideologically-opposed Central American leaders to a negotiating table.

"Dial back to 1986," Symons said, "if you looked at those guys and what was going on in their countries, Arias must have been absolutely off his tits to think he could even get them on the phone!"

The Esquipulas Peace Agreement resulted, settling bloody conflicts that raged between Kremlin- and American-backed groups fighting for power over Nicaragua, El Salvador and Guatemala.  His efforts earned him the 1987 Nobel Peace Prize.

"In person, he’s an oddly persuasive man," Natasegara shared.  "He’s not necessarily hugely charismatic, and yet there’s something right about what he says, and you see how he could have convinced them."

In 2006, Arias risked his legacy by serving once more as Costa Rica’s President; the film shows how his dogged support for an unpopular mining project left his reputation among Costa Ricans in tatters. 

Today, he campaigns – so far unsucessfully – for an International Arms Treaty that would halt the flow of weapons from idustrialized nations to the third world.  

"Use the dividends of peace," Arias says simply, "[and] the world would be quite different, it seems to me."

After the screening, an audience member wondered why so many people in the film, even those very close to Arias, did not speak entirely positively about him.  Natasegara answered, 

"Ironically, I think apart from two people in the film […] everybody was very warm about him.  And I think that’s what’s nice […] that they feel so much trust in him that they can speak openly about his flaws […]  So if they speak badly towards him, it’s only because he allows this kind of openness."

The trailer for The Price of Kings:  Oscar Arias can be seen here.