National Bird

Description

This elegant and chilling documentary provides a glimpse of what the US doesn’t want you to know about drone warfare, offering a much-needed counter-opinion to the argument that it is a “cleaner,” more precise means of waging the war against terror. But just how does it work, and how accurate have the results been? The US government has been reluctant (to put it mildly) to share that information. More, it’s worked strenuously to silence those who’ve publicly questioned the secretive program’s success, and its human impact. Sonia Kennebeck’s documentary focuses on three veterans whose service experiences cause them to seriously doubt the wisdom of drone usage in overseas combat, including one woman who says, “I thought I was going to be on the right side of history, and today I don’t believe I was.” Executive produced by Wim Wenders and Errol Morris, National Bird had to be made in relative secrecy, as the filmmakers wanted to avoid drawing government attention to their project—or further such scrutiny to their protagonists. We get an especially vivid illustration of why that is in the detailed recounting of an actual US drone attack in Afghanistan, where willful dismissal of long-distance analysts’ input resulted in 23 unarmed civilians’ deaths. —Dennis Harvey

Film Details