Alex Gibney tells stories you weren't meant to hear.
Director Alex Gibney's film, Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room reveals the corruption and greed behind one of the most infuriating corporate swindles in U.S. history. Ironically, Gibney sees Enron's advertising slogan, "Ask Why," as the perfect motto for his own investigative work."The traditional role of the press and certain types of filmmakers is to expose corruption," says Gibney, the 52-year-old director and producer also behind The Trials of Henry Kissinger and Soldiers in the Army of God, an HBO documentary that explores the extremes of the antiabortion movement. "I have become interested in how corruption works and happens, the kind of deception that goes on as you hide the crime." Framing issues within incisive human-interest stories, Gibney's films draw from fiction storytelling techniques. "Telling a rip-roaring story is important," he says. "More and more I am interested in the character issues, on a personal or social level."Taxi to the Dark Side is Gibney's most recent character-based documentary. The film examines American policy on torture through the story of an Afghan taxi driver named Dilawar. Falsely accused of attacking a U.S. military base in Khost, Afghanistan in 2002, Dilawar was apprehended by Afghan militia and later detained by the American military. Despite the fact that many of his interrogators believed him to be innocent, Dilawar was brutally tortured and died in U.S. custody. Chillingly, the soldier in charge was reassigned to the Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad.Quote: |
"I have become interested in how corruption works and happens, the kind of deception that goes on as you hide the crime." |