Photo credit: Janet Donovan
“I think it’s probably best not to think about it,” filmmaker Alex Gibney told Hollywood on the Potomac at the premiere screening of Zero Days at the Newseum in reference to a question we posed regarding his safety following a report by The Hollywood Reporter on protecting filmmakers and stars on The Red Carpet. “That’s the way to get through it. If you worry too much it can cripple you.” Gibney has fearlessly tackled such subject matters as The Church of Scientology in Going Clear; We Steal Secrets about Julian Assange & Wikileaks; Enron and Taxi to the Dark Side (winner of the 2007 Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature), among them and all high risk. On taking chances he formerly told CBS: “There was something about my father, my mother, and then my stepfather; I think they all ruddered against authority in their own peculiar ways. And that probably rubbed off on me, too.” Zero Days was the feature at AFI DOCS 2016 Opening Night Gala and opens nationwide on July 8th in theaters and on iTunes.
Alex Gibney
“Alex Gibney’s ZERO DAYS is a documentary thriller about the world of cyberwar. For the first time, the film tells the complete story of Stuxnet, a piece of self-replicating computer malware (known as a “worm” for its ability to burrow from computer to computer on its own) that the U.S. and Israel unleashed to destroy a key part of an Iranian nuclear facility, and which ultimately spread beyond its intended target. ZERO DAYS is the most comprehensive accounting to date of how a clandestine mission hatched by two allies with clashing agendas opened forever the Pandora’s Box of cyberwarfare. Beyond the technical aspects of the story, ZERO DAYS reveals a web of intrigue involving the CIA, the US Military’s new cyber command, Israel’s Mossad and Operations that include both espionage and covert assassinations but also a new generation of cyberweapons whose destructive power is matched only by Nuclear War.” Production
Hollywood on the Potomac chatted with Gibney and other filmmakers who were in town for the AFI Docs Film Festival:
