Producer Morgan Spurlock’s “Untitled Patriot Movement Documentary” Wraps Principal Photography
Warrior Poets partners with First Look Media and Impact Partners on provocative “Patriot Movement” verité
NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Morgan Spurlock’s Warrior Poets, First Look Media, and Impact Partners announced today that production for the Untitled Patriot Movement Documentary feature has wrapped principal photography. Director and cinematographer David Byars (Self Storage) goes inside the 2016 occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge near rural Burns, Oregon, as members of the heavily armed "Patriot Movement" fortify the compound for an extended siege.
“He’s managed to make a complicated, controversial story utterly human, and that’s something we’re thrilled to be a part of. This film packs a wallop, and we’re excited for audiences to see it.”
Produced by Academy Award® nominee Morgan Spurlock (Super Size Me), Emmy®-nominated Jeremy Chilnick (What Would Jesus Buy?, The Third Wave) of Warrior Poets and David Holbrooke (The Diplomat), Untitled Patriot Movement Documentary offers unfettered access to the armed protest led by Ammon Bundy, the son of the defiant leader of the anti-federal lands movement Cliven Bundy. With an insider’s view of a new breed of American ideologues, the film captures the inner workings of this bloody insurrection, the dramatic rise of the Patriot Movement and gives viewers an unprecedented first-hand look into the occupiers’ beliefs by living amongst them and giving them a voice.
"From the first moment I saw the raw footage David captured in Oregon, I knew I had to make this movie,” says producer Morgan Spurlock. “Audiences will be blown away. It's so timely and beyond powerful."
“Ammon and Cliven Bundy, heroes of the Patriot Movement, have zoomed from the radical fringe to the mainstream with lightning speed,” says Dan Cogan, Executive Director of Impact Partners. “If you want to understand American politics and American life today, you need to understand where they and their movement are coming from. With astonishing access and a great storyteller’s eye for detail, David Byars brings you into the heart of their world in eye-popping fashion. I cannot wait for the world to see this film!”
The thread running throughout the movement, and consequently the film, is an incendiary combination of disaffection, government mistrust, and an affinity for guns and vigilante justice. Untitled Patriot Movement Documentary parallels the meteoric rise of Donald Trump, showing the nation that these beliefs, seemingly relegated to radicals, have recently bled into mainstream politics. The project extends First Look Media’s support of innovative political documentary filmmaking as consistently seen in AJ Schnack's election docuseries NomiNation, a portrait of America’s political process, and Academy Award® winner Laura Poitras’ new Julian Assange documentary Risk, and Impact Partners’ groundbreaking work chronicling America today in films such as Danfung Dennis’ Academy Award® nominee Hell And Back Again, Heidi Ewing & Rachel Grady’s Detropia, and Lauren Greenfield’s Queen Of Versailles.
“David Byars captured something truly exceptional in Oregon, a clear-eyed vision of an America we hear a lot about but really see up close,” says Adam Pincus, EVP of Programming and Content for First Look Media. “He’s managed to make a complicated, controversial story utterly human, and that’s something we’re thrilled to be a part of. This film packs a wallop, and we’re excited for audiences to see it.”
Filmmaker David Byars immerses the audience in the right-wing and libertarian extremist rebellion, with exclusive access into the Oregon compound for the occupation, as well as its aftermath. Beginning with the early days of the siege and climaxing with an ultimately deadly FBI car chase, Untitled Patriot Movement Documentary is a portrait of those on the fringe, telling the story the media could not.
Spurlock is represented by CAA and The Arlook Group.
ABOUT WARRIOR POETS
Warrior Poets is a New York based production company founded in 2004 by Academy Award® nominated filmmaker Morgan Spurlock. Since its creation, he and producing partner Jeremy Chilnick have produced multiple award winning films and television programs. Films include One Direction: This Is Us, POM Wonderful Presents: The Greatest Movie Ever Sold, Comic-Con: Episode IV – A Fan’s Hope, Mansome, Where in the World is Osama bin Laden?, The Eagle Huntress, The Pistol Shrimps, and Freakonomics. Television projects include the award-winning FX series 30 Days, the IDA award-winning CNN series Morgan Spurlock: Inside Man, Showtime’s 7 Deadly Sins, ESPN’s The Dotted Line, Emmy and Writer’s Guild nominated The Simpsons 20th Anniversary Special in 3D on Ice!. Digital projects include Hulu’s A Day in the Life, Yahoo’s Mansome, Failure Club, and Losing It with John Stamos and YouTube Red’s Vlogumentary.
Warrior Poets’ upcoming slate includes the Toronto International Film Festival selection Rats, a Discovery "Horror Doc" Film based on Robert Sullivan’s NY Times Best Selling Book, directed, written & produced by Morgan Spurlock, written & produced by Jeremy Chilnick. Warrior Poets’ feature film development slate includes the untitled film about Hollywood Superagent Sue Mengers based on Brian Kellow’s bestselling biography Can I Go Now: The Life of Sue Mengers, Hollywood’s First Superagent.
ABOUT FIRST LOOK MEDIA
FIRST LOOK MEDIA is a new-model media company devoted to supporting independent voices across all platforms, from investigative journalism and documentary filmmaking to smart, provocative entertainment. It was launched in 2013 by eBay founder and philanthropist Pierre Omidyar with the belief that independent perspectives are vital to a vibrant culture and thriving democracy. First Look operates as both a studio and a digital media company.
ABOUT IMPACT PARTNERS
Impact Partners is dedicated to funding independent documentary storytelling that entertains audiences, engages with pressing social issues, and propels the art of cinema forward.
Since its inception in 2007, Impact Partners has been involved in the financing of over 70 films, including: Otto Bell’s Eagle Huntress, which premiered at the 2016 Sundance Film Festival and will be distributed by Sony Pictures Classics in October 2016, The Cove, which won the Academy Award® for Documentary Feature; How to Survive A Plague, which was nominated for the Academy Award® for Documentary Feature; The Hunting Ground; The Queen of Versailles, which won the U.S. Directing Award at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival and Hell and Back Again, which won the Documentary Grand Jury Prize and Cinematography Awards at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival and was nominated for the Academy Award® for Documentary Feature. Impact Partners was founded by Dan Cogan and Geralyn Dreyfous.
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