Wormwood with Errol Morris

Directed by celebrated storyteller Errol Morris, Wormwood explores the limits of knowledge about the past and the lengths we’ll go in our search for the truth. Combining a virtuosic performance by Peter Sarsgaard with Morris’s legendary interview style, Wormwood examines the case of military scientist Frank Olson’s death from every possible angle, bringing the viewer face-to-face with some of the United States’ darkest secrets. Weaving this mystery into a twisting, evolving six-part story of one man’s quest to identify the real circumstances about his father’s death, Wormwood uses immersive, scripted sequences to present Frank Olson’s son Eric’s 60-year personal saga while exploring a hidden history of key events of the second half of the 20th century. Frank Olson is brought to vivid life by Peter Sarsgaard in scenes reenacting the 1950s Cold War milieu, which are then intercut with each new revelation in Eric’s contemporary investigation for a gripping, immediate experience. Pushing boundaries even further than Morris’s classic investigatory documentary The Thin Blue Line, Wormwood again shows that the process of trying to ascertain the truth of any matter is a winding road with many impediments and obstacles.