True/False Films

Secret Screening Red

In person: the co-director.

While the rest of the world was apprehensively crossing fingers in hopes that President Bush had some semblance of a post-invasion plan for Iraq he just wasn't telling the rest of us about, one man was getting ready for business. A good salesman can always smell a potential opportunity, and German armored car dealer Fidelis Cloer is an excellent salesman. In their previous film, the talented directors showed us the Iraq war from the inside. This time, they reveal an equally surreal but far more dangerous Iraq from the pocketbook up. By documenting the war-loving Cloer on what turns out to be the business opportunity of a lifetime, the filmmakers illuminates the complex underbelly of the modern battlefield. To call Cloer a war profiteer is to misunderstand the increasingly globalized nature of war. Commerce drives the industry, but here cost-cutting costs lives. When Cloer decries a military contractor's unwillingness to buy his high-priced but high-quality vehicles for their workers, it's hard not to sympathize. After all, we've all seen footage of what a roadside bomb can do. In the end, as Cloer himself says, he is no simple "car salesman." By the end of the film you will need skin as thick as one of his cars not to feel disheartened by such callous truths, and such brilliant, unending success. (BH)