Storm

War crime prosecutor Hannah Maynard (Kerry Fox) has lost out on promotion to a lesser experienced male counterpart (Stephen Dillane). She’s also seeing a married politician who dictates the terms of their affair. They’re both precursors to the male-dominated world of politics that’ll stand in her way of prosecuting former Serbian general Goran Duric. When the general pleads guilty to a lesser charge in order to cover up the wider atrocities he orchestrated Hannah’s loyalties to her profession, the female witness she promised protection, and her conscience, are all tested. Shot in queasy, shaky camera Storm’s claustrophobia mirrors the surveillance and intimidation both prosecutor and witness fall under. Gritty and bereft of excessive drama, director Hans-Christian Schmid offers a clinical study of how a legal system is ill-equipped to heal emotional scars. The downside to this is that it leaves the audience detached from the characters, as a fellow prosecutor says of their profession: ‘it’s not meant to be therapy’.