The Interpreter is a 2005 political thriller film directed by Sydney Pollack, starring Nicole Kidman, Sean Penn, Catherine Keener, and Jesper Christensen. It was the first film shot inside the United Nations Headquarters, as well as the final feature film directed by Pollack before his death in 2008. An international co-production between the United States, United Kingdom, and France, the film was released in all three countries in April 2005. It received mixed reviews from critics and grossed $162 million against its $80 million budget. Plot In the Southern African country of Matobo, rebel leader Ajene Xola drives two men, Simon Broome and Philippe, to the abandoned Centennial Football Stadium. They discuss how President Edmond Zuwanie's regime has ruthlessly exterminated most of the population, and intimidated the survivors into silence. Upon their arrival at the stadium, they discover that the informants are schoolboys, who point Ajene and Simon in the direction of corpses left by Zuwanie's security apparatus, while Philippe stays in the car. Shouting lures Ajene and Simon back to the field, where they are promptly executed by the boys, who are revealed to be willing accomplices of Zuwanie's secret police. Upon hearing the gunshots, Philippe clambers out of the car and hides, taking pictures of a car arriving carrying Matoban officials, and then escapes the vicinity. Meanwhile, Simon's sister Silvia Broome is working as an interpreter for the United Nations in New York City. A white African born in the United States to a British mother and white Matoban father, she spent most of her life in Matobo, and is a dual citizen of both Matobo and the United States. Her diverse background leads to UN Security Chief Lee Wu wryly describing her as "being the UN". The UN is considering indicting Zuwanie, to stand trial in the International Criminal Court. Initially a liberator, over the past 20 years he has become as corrupt and tyrannical as the government he overthrew, and is now responsible for ethnic cleansing and other atrocities within Matobo. Zuwanie is soon to visit the UN and put forward his own case to the General Assembly, in an attempt to avoid the indictment. A security scare caused by a malfunctioning metal detector forces the evacuation of the UN building, and, as Silvia returns at night to reclaim some personal belongings, she overhears two men discussing an assassination plot in Ku (the Matoban lingua franca).