John Doe

An idyllic home: the man comes home from work, the woman is on the verge of ‘baby burnout blues’. Their reunion is stormy, and at dawn the next day the police ring the doorbell to carry out a search.

In this couple on the brink of exhaustion, where desire, intimacy, affection, communication and dreams have insidiously faded away, an external event causes their routine to implode: the man, almost in spite of himself – because he found himself faced with a choice: to act or to turn a blind eye to the massive tax fraud being committed by the audit firm he works for – has become a whistleblower under the pseudonym John Doe.

Amidst a disrupted timeline, a parallel emerges between this action by an ordinary man – the last bastion of ethics – and the nuanced questioning of his wife, who is, in a sense, a whistleblower regarding their marriage and her relationship with their newborn.

Whilst this couple’s descent into hell may be an opportunity for them to reconnect, it is also a statement of principle regarding the choices we face: what sort of society do we want to live in? What excesses are our politicians prepared to accept? How far does the tolerance of our democracies extend?