Millionaire-Turned-Filmmaker Traces Iraq War
Charles Ferguson made his fortune as a software developer, then made an unlikely move to filmmaking.
His documentary on the Iraq war, No End In Sight, tracks the process in Washington that led to the current situation in Iraq, and it breaks some new ground: Key decision-makers talk for the first time about the war and its aftermath.
Ferguson, a Silicon Valley millionaire, overcame some major obstacles to tell the story. He hired his own 20-man security team with four pickups mounted with machine guns and drove down to Baghdad from Kurdistan, filming in high definition.
The documentary is scheduled to open in theaters across the country.
'No End In Sight'
The Bush White House comes in for withering criticism — from former insiders as well as analysts — in Charles Ferguson's documentary.
- Director: Charles Ferguson
- Genre: Documentary
- Running Time: 102 minutes
If you're not already angry about the war in Iraq, this meticulously assembled documentary will almost certainly raise your hackles — either at the folks who've been prosecuting the war, or at director Charles Ferguson, whose clear aim is to hold their feet to the fire.
He does so with a quick summary of 2006 news reports about chaos and death on the ground in Iraq, then goes back to the origins of America's Iraq policy in the 1980s. Interviewing figures from inside a number of different administrations, most of whom talk about escalating miscalculations, he paints a portrait of unprofessionalism, incompetence, and devastating errors in judgment. His most damning witnesses served on the Bush team, including former Deputy Secretary of State Richard L. Armitage. There's nothing new about the case Ferguson makes, but it's rarely been made with such devastating force.
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