Terrible people with terrible secrets. Isn’t that what we want from political thrillers and documentaries? Barbet Schroeder’s Terror’s Advocate and Nicolas Klotz’s The Heartbeat Detector are fact and fiction respectively, but united by their nearly lubricious glee in historical villainy and the shifting sands of political guilt.

Both wear the robes of justice, rather as a dominatrix wears S&M gear to inflict ecstasy. We the customers, or voyeur onlookers, beg for more as Schroeder’s lash cracks down, implicating the world in three-score years of violent political history. The epoch in question – from the 1940s to today – is seen through the story of extreme French lawyer Jacques Vergès (pictured left), a basilisk barrister with an epigrammatic wit, a lifetime of controversy, and a client book that has included Klaus Barbie, Carlos the Jackal and, nearly, Saddam Hussein. (He coveted that brief but didn’t get it.)