War Game | movie | 2024 | Official Featurette - video Dailymotion

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A bipartisan group of U.S. defense, intelligence, and elected policymakers spanning five presidential administrations pa | dG1feGZEZzdsRTNfZEU

Transcript

00:00 [MUSIC PLAYING]

00:03 Hi, I'm Jesse Moss.

00:06 And I'm Tony Gerber.

00:07 And we're the directors of "War Game,"

00:09 a documentary that's premiering at Sundance in the special

00:13 screenings category.

00:14 [MUSIC PLAYING]

00:18 Like a lot of Americans, we're still

00:19 trying to make sense of what happened on January 6, 2021

00:23 with the insurrection.

00:24 And a little over a year ago, I found out

00:27 that a veterans organization, VetVoice,

00:29 was going to conduct a very unusual "War Game"

00:33 simulation of the next insurrection, in which

00:36 the US military fragments.

00:39 And some members of the military throw their support

00:41 behind the losing presidential candidate.

00:43 And this struck me as a fascinating exercise,

00:46 as a way to confront and think about the January 6

00:50 insurrection and what our political future is.

00:52 And I immediately reached out to my friend and fellow director,

00:55 Tony Gerber.

00:56 We had a cast of 40, a crew of 80, six cinematographers,

01:00 with the action unfolding simultaneously

01:03 in four different locations.

01:05 It was important for us to co-direct,

01:07 because the production challenge was enormous.

01:10 We couldn't direct the participants,

01:11 but we could direct the camera operators.

01:14 So seeing every camera angle simultaneously

01:16 on a bank of monitors, it was like having

01:19 a beautiful giant train set.

01:21 It's like having a ringside seat at the White House Situation

01:24 Room with the president managing the gravest

01:26 national crisis.

01:27 And the adrenaline rush of doing that kind of work

01:31 is extraordinary.

01:32 [MUSIC PLAYING]

01:37 We could build a simulation of the White House Situation Room,

01:41 this command bunker where the president manages his crises.

01:46 And we could do it with great fidelity

01:48 by bringing in a theatrical designer

01:50 to help us realize that vision.

01:52 And that voice felt that the more versatility

01:55 there was in that environment, the better

01:57 the performances of these role players would be.

02:00 It was a bit of a gamble in terms

02:02 of turning this into a film.

02:03 Was it going to be engaging?

02:06 Was it going to feel like inside baseball?

02:08 Or was it going to feel like a thriller?

02:10 And I think at the end of the day, it is a thriller.

02:12 The emotion was real.

02:14 The fear was real.

02:16 The passion and the stakes were all real.

02:19 And although these are non-actors not acting,

02:23 there's an incredible truth to their performance.

02:26 They know their roles because they've lived them.

02:29 We had a former governor, two US senators, retired generals,

02:33 veterans of the CIA, the Department of Homeland Security,

02:35 and the Department of Defense.

02:37 We are so polarized and so partisan.

02:40 What's unique about this project, this exercise,

02:42 the group of people who were brought together,

02:44 they're from both sides of the aisle politically.

02:47 We shot most of it in one day, in real time, six hours.

02:50 But it took a year to edit.

02:52 We worked really hard to keep the action present and immersive,

02:56 breaking out only occasionally for historical context

03:00 and character insight.

03:01 The backstories of all of the people involved

03:03 in this war game are fascinating.

03:06 Many of them are military veterans.

03:08 They're great patriots and really trying to save democracy.

03:11 They see democracy as under threat.

03:13 I think we're also traumatized by January 6, 2021,

03:17 and the imagery of insurrectionists

03:18 overrunning the Capitol.

03:19 It's really hard to look at.

03:21 And I think the power of this film is it provides another way

03:24 of looking at where we are as a country

03:26 and our divisions and our strengths, too.

03:29 It's a way of engaging with the trauma

03:33 without looking directly at it.

03:35 You know, in the end, the catharsis

03:38 for both our role players and the audience is real.

03:41 In that way, it's also like live theater.

03:43 It's not complete until there's an audience in front of it.

03:46 And it's going to be very exciting to hear

03:49 the reaction of an audience to this film.

03:51 Yeah, I can't wait.

03:53 ♪♪

03:56 ♪♪

03:58 ♪♪

04:00 ♪♪

04:02 ♪♪

04:04 [BLANK_AUDIO]

War Game | movie | 2024 | Official Featurette

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