Channel 4 - FourDocs blog - Taxi to the Dark Side

Taxi to the Dark Side

Becca Frankel 9 April 2008, 5:25 PM

Last night I went to a new film night run by Little White Lies magazine, to screen seriously ambitious films. They debuted with a highly political feature that justly, but against all odds, won the acclaim of best documentary at the Oscars this year (as well as a 100% score on Rotten Tomatoes).

taxi Taxi to the Dark Side tells the story a Dilawar, the gentle Afghan taxi driver who was taken into Bagram prison for no clear reason. He died a few days later, with legs that were 'pulpified', and a death certificate released to his family (in a language they couldn't understand) stating homicide as the cause. His personal story is critically contextualised against the Bush administrations sneaky tactics to sanction torture as a weapon for their soldier-puppets to use when detaining and interrogating potential suspects in the war on terrorism.

Alex Gibney also directed the documentary Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room. Both show his ability to decode how scandalous acts are legitimised in the fine fine fine print, and then translate that clearly at a level that is enlightening without being patronising in the slightest. Taxi to the Dark Side progresses the story and facts at exactly the right pace, and with a range of visual techniques. Some of the sensory deprivation footage reminded me of Naomi Klein's viral film The Shock Doctrine, which is well worth watching too.

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It's good to know...

... we've teamed up with The Co-operative for this competition. We have a team of experts ready to watch the films, and they will choose which one will win a cash prize of £2,000, which ones get shown to a Channel4 Commissioning Editor, and which ones have the chance to be shown on Channel 4 itself on their 3 Minute Wonder strand.

Entered so far ...