Filmmaker and director Tom Donahue spoke to B&T on his Paramount+ docuseries Murder Of God’s Banker and what happens when institutions aren’t properly held to account.
Donahue is someone who isn’t afraid to challenge authority. His previous works include This Changes Everything – a documentary film about gender inequality in Hollywood – and Thank You For Your Service – a production that examines the failed mental health service in the military.
In his latest docuseries Murder Of God’s Banker, produced by Paramount+ in partnership with Donahue’s company Creative Chaos vmg, he takes on arguably his biggest targets yet – the Mafia, the Catholic Church, and the CIA.
The docuseries follows the story of Roberto Calvi. In 1982, Roberto Calvi, a fugitive financier known as “God’s Banker,” was found hanging from London’s Blackfriars Bridge.
What starts as an investigation surrounding one man’s death, quickly expands into a story of international intrigue, as it’s revealed that Calvi was in business with the Vatican, the Mafia, as well as neo-fascist groups in Italy.
When asked why he is so intrigued by challenging some of the biggest institutions on the planet, Donahue said he is driven by an interest in those who fall on the wrong side of these institutions.
“I am generally attracted to stories of outsiders, of people without power.”
“Many of the issues they face are caused or propagated by powerful institutions and their systemic flaws (mental health policy in the US military, workplace discrimination in Hollywood, medical malpractice, etc.). It is our job as documentarians to continually work to call these out, to try to right these injustices.”
For Donahue, great documentaries are those that help us see things from a different angle.
“Good documentaries are ones that tell stories with themes and subjects that matter to the world and that can teach us something about our own lives. Great documentaries have the ability to draw on our empathy, to put us in someone else’s shoes to help shake us out of our own sometimes limited and sometimes dangerously myopic perspective.”
When it comes to shifting perspective, Murder Of God’s Banker doesn’t fail to disappoint. The docuseries exposes secret connections between some of the world’s most unlikely allies.
“I think there are so many interesting things about this story, from Calvi’s own character flaws and ambitions that sent him on such a dangerous and desperate path to the complicity of the Catholic Church in economic crimes to the connection between the American CIA and the Italian fascists,” Donahue says.
“I think the thing that ties all of these strands together is the corruption that happens when institutions are allowed to operate in secret, without proper accountability.”
The pure scale of the story meant it was “too big a tale” for one feature film, Donahue says, adding that “telling it over multiple episodes was the way to give it the time and space it really needed and deserved.”
Whilst the story is distinctly Italian, Donahue says there’s something we can all learn from Calvi’s tale.
“This is not a small story and it is a very important one. It is not just about Italy’s history. We can find much of our own selves and what’s wrong with our own institutions in this story.”
