The serpent: conversation with a serial killer

He is believed to be responsible for anywhere from 12 to 24 killings over a decades-long spree. He preyed on tourists traveling through southeast Asia’s "Hippie Trail" during the 1970s: He drugged them, killed them and stole their identity to travel, searching for more victims. He was a killer, but also a conman, a gem dealer, and was described as charming, emanating a strange power.

Today, Charles Sobhraj is an old man, incarcerated in a VIP cell of a Nepalese prison. Sentenced to life imprisonment, he has lost nothing of the fascinating yet dark energy that has always inhabited him.

Through a series of unpublished conversations discretly recorded from his jail cell, and all the elements gathered in 17 years of investigation (testimonies of those who know him best - including ex-girlfriends along with archives and manuscripts written by Charles Sobhraj himself), director Jean-Charles Deniau, one of the rare persons to have been in contact with him, delivers an unprecedented portrait of Asia’s most notorious killer.