Laura Poitras, the American documentary filmmaker who just won the top prize at the Venice Film Festival, brings her award-winning film "All the Beauty and the Bloodshed" to the show this week. at the Toronto Film Festival in Canada.
"Beauty and Blood" directed by Laura Petras won Venice's highest honor, the Golden Lion for Best Picture. People's Vision
She has always dared to think and act, regardless of the friendship between the landlords in Toronto and the fact that Venice just awarded her the highest honor, the Golden Lion, a few days ago, and criticized these world's top film festivals for screening one after another recently. The documentary, which was co-produced by former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, said the move was tantamount to whitewashing and covering up the truth for the former first family of the United States.
"Beauty and Bloodshed"
Hillary Clinton, 74, has turned away from American politics since her 2016 election defeat and turned her attention to filmmaking. She first worked on the four-part documentary "Hillary," which featured her in 2019, before joining the CW's "The Woman's Hour" production team as an executive producer. .
Four-part documentary "Hillary"
At the Sundance Film Festival in the United States in 2020, the world premiere of the documentary "Hillary" was highly praised by the American media. It was then screened at the Berlin Film Festival that year as a participating film, and landed in Disney's subsidiary in March. Hulu streaming platform. The film takes Hillary Clinton's 2016 confrontation with Trump's US presidential election process as an entry point. Although it also involves negative news such as the "email door" incident, it is based on feminist brushstrokes as a whole, emphasizing her aura of female politicians , also lamented her failure to become the first female president in U.S. history. However, this documentary rarely touches on its real failure and the flaws in its own character, so some critics believe that the New York documentary director Nanette Burstein (Nanette Burstein) who directed the film is not making any documentary at all. , but filming Hillary's personal promo.
Perhaps it was the success of the documentary "Hillary" that made the former political strongman fall in love with movies. Soon, she and her daughter, Chelsea Clinton, turned into screenwriters and executive producers, and remade the book "The Book of Gutsy Women" (The Book of Gutsy Women) co-written by the mother and daughter in 2019 into a documentary series "Courage" The Power of Gutsy. At the same time, the mother and daughter also independently founded HiddenLight Films, which raised funds to film "In her Hands", a documentary about Afghanistan's youngest female mayor that aired on Netflix, and acted as the producer. The feeling of transitioning to be a full-time filmmaker.
"In Her Hand," a documentary about Afghanistan's youngest female mayor, is produced by Hillary Clinton.
On September 9 this year, the documentary series "There Are Seeds" landed on Apple's streaming media platform. To promote the show, Hillary was invited to the opening ceremony of the Venice Film Festival to walk the red carpet. Later, "In Her Hand" also had its world premiere at the Toronto Film Festival, and Hillary flew to Canada to give a speech. At the end of the month, their mother and daughter will also receive the "Women Power Award in the global film industry" issued by "Variety" magazine. ” (Power of Women).
Hillary Clinton on the red carpet at the opening ceremony of the Venice Film Festival. IC diagram
At the Toronto Film Festival Documentary Industry Summit held on September 13, Laura Petras, who filmed the documentary "Risk" with Julian Assange, the founder of the "Wikileaks" website, was directed by Assange. Qi will be extradited to the United States, pointing out that this is a top priority that is threatening press freedom around the world, but Hillary Clinton, who is involved, walks the red carpet beautifully everywhere to promote the film she participated in, which is really disappointing. She finds it quite ironic, and these film festivals provide her with catwalk platforms, and in her view, they are also helping Hillary Whitewash the stains of history.
"Risk" features Julian Assange, founder of WikiLeaks.
Immediately, Petras' fiery remarks aroused a lot of discussion in the audience, and it also made Thom Powers, the director of the selection of the Toronto Film Festival's documentary unit, who hosted the summit, a little confused, because Clinton The mother-daughter-produced "In Control of Her" was selected by him to participate in Toronto. Of course, Hillary Clinton himself was also invited to the film festival for the film platform.
Back in the day, the "WikiLeaks" website published a large amount of direct evidence about the killing of civilians by the US government and troops in Afghanistan and Iraq, and Hillary Clinton, who served as secretary of state in the Obama administration, was also criticized for this. "She was an active participant in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, she led the escalation of military operations, and now everyone seems to have completely forgotten these things as if it never happened, and also provides her with platforms like global film festivals, It really worries me," Laura Petras said.
Laura Petras, 58, was born in Boston, USA. She started making documentaries in 2003, mostly involving political themes. In 2006, the work "Iraq, My Country" (My Country, My Country) stood on the position of ordinary Iraqi people, faithfully recorded the daily life of the local people under the occupation of the US military, and won the Oscar for best documentary that year. Nominated, but ultimately lost to "An Inconvenient Truth" on environmental issues. In 2010, she found bin Laden's former bodyguard and driver, and cut into the US war on terror from another angle. Coupled with the "Prism Gate" documentary "Citizenfour" that finally won the Oscar for Best Documentary Feature, it can be said that Laura Petras's documentary film career has always revolved around what is justice and what is It is no wonder that her speech this week has some meanings of the outspoken child in "The Emperor's New Clothes".
"Iraq, My Homeland" chronicles the daily lives of local Iraqis under US military occupation.
Petras' "The Fourth Citizen" won the 2015 Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature.
Petras also admitted that several major film festivals invited her as a guest, provided a screening platform for her works, and even gave her the highest honor, so she had carefully considered for a long time, whether to do this without any regard for face. Target them. But she finally decided to speak her true feelings boldly, because "documentaries are also journalism, and as a journalist, you just need to ask such difficult questions, you are going to pursue the truth, and you are going to be held accountable."
At this year's Venice Film Festival, the new film "No Bears" by the Iranian director Jafar Panahi, who lost his personal freedom, won the special jury award in the main competition unit, and was also shown at the Toronto Film Festival. It will run all the way at the Zurich Film Festival and the New York Film Festival. But in Laura Petras' view, it is hypocritical for these prestigious film festivals to show "No Bear" while opening their arms to ex-politicians like Hillary Clinton. "In my opinion, there is no difference between what the U.S. government did with Assange and what the Iranian government did with Jafar Panahi."