UK digital channel More4 is going to screen Death of a President next month and will make its world premiere at the Toronto Film Festival on September 10th. Written and directed by Gabriel Range it is a fictional film done in the style of a documentary about the assassination of the current US president. Media Guardian reports:
Digital channel More4 will court controversy once again this autumn with a fictional piece, shot as a documentary, about the assassination of the US president, George Bush.
Death of a President seems certain to cause a furore on the other side of the Atlantic when it is premiered at the Toronto film festival next month. In the UK the 90-minute film will be broadcast first on Channel 4’s digital service in October.
The drama takes the form of a fictional documentary looking back at the assassination of Mr Bush in October 2007, after he has delivered a speech to business leaders in Chicago.
When Mr Bush arrives in the city he is confronted by a massive demonstration against the Iraq war and is gunned down by a sniper as he leaves the venue. The hunt for Mr Bush’s killer focuses on a Syrian-born man, Jamal Abu Zikri.
Death of a President will use a combination of archive footage, CGI special effects and scripted scenes.
It sounds an interesting an idea for a film but it is bound to cause a major stink in the US, particularly on the right side of the political spectrum. That said More4 is a an excellent channel that screens a lot of good stuff (watch out for the war strand next week, especially the excellent HBO doc Baghdad ER) so I don’t think it will be the kind of exploitative propaganda right wing bloggers are bound to pigeon hole it as. But we shall see.
> IMDb entry for writer-director Gabriel Range
> The official press release for the Toronto premiere at The Hot Blog
> Adam Sherwin of The Times reports on the film
> Offical site for More 4