TORONTO—“The Laundromat,” one of the more star-studded films in the Toronto International Film Festival this year, interweaves narratives on complex offshore tax schemes with vignettes depicting the human cost to the victims of those benefiting from the schemes, among them heads of Mexican drug cartels and Chinese politicians involved in human rights atrocities and organ harvesting.
Directed by Steven Soderbergh, the comedy-drama stars Meryl Streep as the fictional character Ellen Martin who loses her husband in a boat accident and sets out to trace the shadowy world of tax havens and shell companies after being effectively robbed of her insurance payment. The film is narrated by Gary Oldman and Antonio Banderas, who play the real-world founders of Mossack Fonseca, the Panama City-based law firm at the centre of the Panama Papers leak of 2015.
