A Thousand Billion Dollars

A Thousand Billion Dollars (Mille milliards de dollars, 1982) — watch online on iFILM — is a French political thriller directed by Henri Verneuil, starring Patrick Dewaere.

Journalist Paul Kerjan stumbles onto figures that link a prominent businessman to an American multinational quietly buying up French industry sector by sector. He runs the story. The next morning his main source is found dead — official verdict: suicide. Dewaere plays a man who realises far too quickly that the deeper he goes, the more he resembles the next casualty. Jeanne Moreau, Charles Denner, Anny Duperey and Michel Auclair round out an ensemble that makes the conspiracy feel less like paranoia and more like arithmetic.

Verneuil made crisp, politically serious thrillers, and this one plays on a real anxiety of the era — the reach of multinationals and what sovereignty actually means. Stream A Thousand Billion Dollars (1982) on iFILM.