This provocative documentary investigates the charges against two young activists arrested while protesting the 2008 GOP Convention. “Both a compelling news documentary and a stunning character study.” — Austin Chronicle
Better This World brews a concoction even more potent than the conspiracy charges leveled at its protagonists.
Screened as part of NZIFF 2011
Better This World 2011
The path of the political dissident in the post-9/11 world is not for the tender-hearted. This account of two idealistic young men who found that out, to their enormous cost, carries ominous echoes of Abi King-Jones and Errol Wright’s Operation 8. The lifelong friends from Midland, Texas, went to Minneapolis with their mentor, Brandon Darby, a charismatic champion of the post-Katrina homeless, to protest the 2008 Republican Convention. Never did they suspect that a radical activist who persuaded them to toy with violence was actually an FBI plant, and that they would soon be facing years in prison. With access to the key players, including prosecutors and FBI agents, this documentary presents insight into the ‘war on terror’ as a campaign, fuelled with not a little personal animus, to demonise and discourage unruly dissent. — BG
“Sympathetic but frank… a compelling news documentary and a stunning character study of young activists in a chaotic political time.” — Michael King, Austin Chronicle