VENICE, Italy — Jude Law plays an FBI agent investigating the violent crimes of a white supremacist group in “The Order,” which premiered Saturday at the Venice Film Festival.

An adaptation of Kevin Flynn and Gary Gerhardt’s nonfiction book “The Silent Brotherhood,” Nicholas Hoult was cast as Robert Jay Mathews, the charismatic leader of the group, which was considered the most radical hate group since the Ku Klux Klan. Their crimes, including bank robberies and armored car heists that the group was using to fund an armed revolution, led to one of the largest manhunts in FBI history, in 1983.

“What amazed me was it was a story I hadn’t heard about before,” said Law, who also produced. “It like a piece of work that needed to be made now.”

He added: “It’s always interesting finding a piece from the relative past that has some relationship to the present day.”

Law made the trip to Italy with his director, Justin Kurzel, and co-stars Hoult, Jurnee Smollett and Tye Sheridan for the premiere.

His character, called Agent Huss, is an amalgam FBI agent and not based on a specific person. This, they said, was important for positioning him within this story.

“He represents an awful lot of us,” Law said. “He felt his hardest work was behind him and in fact he had his biggest battle ahead of him.”

Kurzel, an Australian filmmaker known for the 2015 adaptation of “Macbeth” with Michael Fassbender, said he had always wanted to make an American film in the vein of dramatic thrillers from the 1970s like “The French Connection,” “Mississippi Burning” and “All the President’s Men.” He tried to make this film with the simplicity he admired in those classics.

Hoult felt it was a “difficult story to tell and difficult characters to inhabit,” but he praised his director for helping to create a safe and creative environment as they explored the darkness of Mathews. He had just recently learned, on the boat over to the Lido, that Kurzel had told Law to actually follow him around one day to get into character.

“The first time we spoke was in the first scene we interact,” Hoult said. “It gave a great energy.”

And all were struck by the parallels to today. Though no one wanted to comment directly on the upcoming U.S. presidential election, the film, they hope, speaks for itself.

“The history of America is very complex,” Smollett said. “This level of bigotry is not new, and it has existed in our nation since it was founded. As artists we get to hold a mirror up to society … explore the very complex sides of humanity, the ugliness, the darkness in order for us to learn from it and hopefully not repeat it.”

“The Order” is playing in competition at Venice, alongside “ Maria,” “ Babygirl,” “The Room Next Door,” “Queer” and “Joker: Folie à Deux.”

Vertical Entertainment will release the film in theaters later this year.

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