Films that bring previously obscured truths about the political process to the attention of the public, showing for example how offices of public trust are used for private purposes.
THE WORLD WILL TREMBLE IS ABOUT A REVELATION THAT WORKED In 1984, the film The Killing Fields informed filmviewers of a tragedy as millions of Cambodian lives were at risk during the Khmer Rouge takeover a decade earlier (1975-1979). Where was a similar graphic display of what the Nazis did to Jews during World War […]
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NO OTHER LAND PHOTOGRAPHS ONGOING HUMAN RIGHTS VIOLATIONS A docudrama, No Other Land films Israelis as they forcibly take over land in the West Bank occupied by Palestinians for centuries. Filming starts in 2019 by showing how 1,000 Palestinians live in standard housing within Masafer Yatta, a group of 20 Palestinian villages in the mountainous
BONHOEFFER: PASTOR.SPY.ASSASSIN IS A BIOPIC ABOUT THE GERMAN RESISTANCE As a biography of Dietrich Bonhoeffer (played by Jonas Dassler and Phileas Heyblom at a young age), the film has three subtitles to attract attention of filmviewers about someone long forgotten, but the story seems almost too contemporary. Directed by Todd Komarnicki, the film shifts back
THE APPRENTICE TRIES TO EXPLAIN THE TRUMP PUZZLE Donald Trump attracts voters regardless of his dangerous policy pronouncements, so domestic and foreign pundits have been baffled, unable to explain how such a person could exist in the United States of America. The Apprentice, directed by Ali Abbasi, seeks to lay out how his life evolved
REAGAN PROVIDES AN INSIDER’S VIEW OF THE FORMER PRESIDENT Biopics tend to glorify those portrayed, and Reagan does so in spades, resulting in applause at the end of the film in a Los Angeles theater even a few days after the premier. The film’s chronology begins in his childhood, when Ronny (played by David Henrie)
KIDNAPPED: THE ABDUCTION OF EDGARDO MORTARA FEATURES ITALIAN HISTORY Director Marco Bellocchio has filmed a history of Italy in which the fate of one person—Edgardo Mortara (played at age 6 by Enea Sala, as an adult by Leonardo Maltese)—galvanized opposition to rule over parts of the country known then as the Papal States. During the
I AM GITMO TELLS THE TRUTH ABOUTTHE BUSH ADMINISTRATION’S WAR CRIMES As a title at the end of the film attests, 86 percent of those at Guantánamo should not have been there. What happened is that Defense Secretary Rumsfeld had thousands of leaflets dropped in Afghanistan after 9/11, encouraging Afghans to rat on their rivals,
ONE LIFE IS A BIOPIC WITH TWO HIGH POINTS Nicholas Winton (played by Johnny Flynn) is the person who organized the rescue of 669 Jewish children from Prague before the Nazis took full control of Czechoslovakia in 1939. One Life, directed by James Hawes, begins in 1987, when Winton (played by Anthony Hopkins) is 78
LA SYNDICALISTE EXPOSES ONE OF CHINA’S QUESTS TO DOMINATE THE GLOBAL MARKET Directed by Jean-Paul Salomé, La Syndicaliste is a biopic with three stories. The first is how Maureen Kearney (played by Isabelle Huppert) spent twenty years as a trade union firebrand (whence the title), fighting on behalf of 50,000 union workers to relieve their
RUSTIN CELEBRATES THE ORGANIZERS OF THE MARCH ON WASHINGTON A biopic of Bayard Rustin (played by Colman Domingo), the film Rustin reveals that the March on Washington of August 28, 1963, was a goal he sought since 1941. He was frustrated that nothing much happened in Congress after the 1954 Supreme Court ruling that schools