Gambit

Credits
Year: 2005  
Country: CH  
Running Time: 107 min
Director: Sabine Gisiger
Author: Sabine Gisiger
Producer: Karin Koch
Co-Producer: SF DRS, TSR, TSI, WDR  
Camera: Reinhard Köcher  
Editor: Patricia Wagner  
Sound: Andi Litmanowitsch, Matteo de Pellegrini  
Music: Peter Bräker/Balz Bachmann  
Gaffer: Bruno Gabsa  
Production Manager: Claudia Eichholzer  
Cast: Jörg Sambeth, Caroline Sambeth, Birgit Sambeth Glasner, Ulrich Sambeth, Roger Dagon, Alberto Moro-Visconti, Italo Pasquon, Balz Hosang, Ekkehard Sieker  

Awards

Prix de la semaine de la critique, International Film Festival Locarno 2005
Publikumspreis der Rheinischen Post für den beliebtesten Film, Duisburg 2005
Preis der Stiftung Südtiroler Sparkasse, Bozner Filmtage 2006
Jury second Price, Madrid Documenta 2006
Jury Special Mention, Mar del Plata IFF 2006
Prix international du documentaire et du reportage méditerranéen, Meilleur Réportage de la Méditerrannée, Marseille 2006
Baden-Württembergischer Dokumentarfilmpreis

Festivals
Solothurner Filmtage, 2007

Seveso 1976 was one of the great European catastrophes of the 20th century. When an installation exploded in the Icmesa chemical factory a large quantity of highly poisonous dioxin blasted over this North Italian Village. Though no one died, the population of Seveso suffered enormously: Many people, especially children had to be hospitalized for dioxin poisoning, animals had to be slaughtered, plants and fields were destroyed.

Jörg Sambeth was a young, up-and-coming technical director of Givaudan, a subsidiary of Hoffman-Laroche, the porwerful Swiss chemical company. He was also the supervisor responsible for Icmesa. In the aftermath of the catastrophe, Sambeth was indicted and sentenced to five years in prison for negligence. In Gambit, Sambeth talks openly about all that went wrong before and after Seveso. The film investigates how a very specific kind of corporate culture was really responsible for the harm done.