Backstabbing for Beginners

Backstabbing for Beginners (2018) is a political thriller based on a real insider account that you can watch online on iFILM. Danish director Per Fly adapted Michael Soussan's memoir about his time as a young UN coordinator on the Oil-for-Food Programme in post-war Iraq. Theo James plays the idealist who arrives believing the job is about feeding people. Ben Kingsley plays his boss Pasha, a veteran diplomat who has spent decades learning how things actually work.

The programme was meant to let Saddam Hussein sell oil in exchange for humanitarian goods. What it became, according to the investigation that followed, was one of the largest corruption schemes in UN history, with billions siphoned off at multiple levels. The film tracks Soussan's awakening: the more he pulls at loose threads, the faster the whole structure unravels — and the more dangerous his position becomes, especially once a Kurdish woman he has grown close to is drawn into the orbit of the same people he is trying to expose.

Kingsley carries the film's moral weight. His Pasha is never straightforwardly corrupt or straightforwardly honest, which makes every scene between the two leads feel like a negotiation over who owns the truth. Stream Backstabbing for Beginners online on iFILM.