The world's richest people are playing a "black-hearted joke on all of us" Hollywood star Meryl Streep said Sunday as a new movie based on the Panama Papers scandal was premiered.
The American actress plays a cheated widow out to right financial chicanery in Laundromat, a deft satire on the maze of shell companies that criminals and the super-rich use to hide their billions.
"This movie is fun and it's funny, but it's really important," Streep told reporters at the Venice film festival.
Director Steven Soderbergh shows how the massive 2016 leak of documents from the Panama law firm Mossack & Fonseca exposed the lengths the rich and powerful go to avoid paying tax - mostly legally.
It sent shock waves across the world when the off-shore dealings of leaders in a string of countries were exposed, leading to the resignation of the Icelandic prime minister Sigmundur Davio Gunnlaugsson.
But rather than casting the firm's partners as shady baddies, Soderbergh lets the pair - played by British actor Gary Oldman and Spanish star Antonio Banderas - dig their own graves by telling it from their point of view.
"This is a funny way to tell a black-hearted joke, a joke that's been played on all of us," Streep told reporters in Venice.