Alex Gibney Page 2

Directed by Alex Gibney, Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief, has become the most talked about film to premiere at this year’s Sundance Film Festival. Claiming to lift the lid on the famously secretive religion, the doc also includes allegations about famous follower Tom Cruise and the church’s founder L. Ron Hubbard.

Tom Cruise is one of Scientology's most famous followers

Based in part on the book of the same name by Lawrence Wright, the film features interviews with former church members and never before seen footage, including some of Tom Cruise stage at a Scientology gala.

Continue reading: Featuring Allegations About Tom Cruise, Scientology Documentary 'Going Clear' Captivates Sundance Film Festival

Ben Foster will play the part of Lance Armstrong in Stephen Frear’s biopic, and he will be joined by Chris O’Dowd, who’ll play journalist David Walsh, who campaigned tirelessly to expose the biggest cheating scandal in the world of sport, Deadline report.

Ben Foster and Chris O'Dowd will both star in the untitled biopic

Foster, while bearing a resemblance to the disgraced cyclist, has seen his reputation grow of late with performances in Kill Your Darlings – alongside Daniel Radcliffe - and Lone Survivor, which also stars Mark Wahlberg. The Irish actor O’Dowd has become a household name stateside due to his performances in Bridesmaids and the popular sitcom, Girls.

Continue reading: Ben Foster To Play Lance Armstrong In Biopic, Chris O'Dowd, His Nemesis, David Walsh

Lance Armstrong’s story is an implausible, unbelievable, incredible, but none of those adjectives would be applicable if the following wasn’t: it’s true. In The Armstrong Lie, Gibney admits to rooting for the shamed cyclist, before discovering – along with the rest of the world – that he’d been cheating.

Lance Armstrong tells his side in The Armstrong Lie

Famed for his insightful, thought-provoking documentaries that explore some of the biggest happenings in culture, sport, politics and crime – even though those spectrums often collide – the route that lead Gibney to his Armstrong piece wasn’t typical.

Continue reading: 'The Armstrong Lie': An Incredible Story Of Denial And Power, Told By Alex Gibney [Trailer]

Friday 12th July has been quite the launchpad for a host of new and exciting films, showcasing the genre spectrum. From action blockbusters to indies, political thrillers to kids animation films, there'll be something to suit all tastes and ages as the summer of film gets hotter.

Well, we'll start off with Trap For Cinderella first because it's the underdog erotic thriller indie with an interesting premise. The Iain Softley film will star young, up-and-coming British actresses Tuppence Middleton and Alexandra Roach as vivacious Micky and shy Do: two girls who are reunited after years apart and reignite a secret passion despite the disapproval they are faced with.

Tuppence Middleton & Alexandra Roach In Trap For Cinderella.

Continue reading: Pacific Rim Now Out In Cinemas, But What Other Films Have Been Released Today?

Alex Gibney is one of his generation’s finest documentary makers, and amidst the flurry of WikiLeaks films, documentaries and books that are set to document the very real thriller that is Julian Assange’s life, he was first to cover it – but where is Assange’s interview?

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange addresses a crowd from the Ecuadorian Embassy

We Steal Secrets: the Story of WikiLeaks is not only the first WikiLeaks documentary, but it’s generally considered to be the best, but, as Gibney confirms, Assange’s absence from the film isn’t due to his busy schedule, or constantly seeking asylum in different countries. Rather, it’s a financial dispute. "Here's this tremendously romantic figure travelling the world with a laptop in his knapsack, exposing abuses of power," says Gibney. "That sounds like a pretty good story to me."

Continue reading: How Julian Assange's $1m Request Drove Alex Gibney Away

It was only a matter of time before the story of Julian Assange and WikiLeaks got adapted for the big screen. The idea of one man taking on the world’s government with the aid of thousands of anonymous informers seems to capture the zeitgeist of the 21st century so well, that it is perfectly suited for a movie adaptation – or several. Director Alex Gibney’s We Steal Secrets: The Story of WikiLeaks is only the first of several – Laura Poitras, Ken Loach, Craig Ferguson, even Steven Spielberg are all working on documentaries or adaptations of the story, with Spielberg’s The Fifth Estate having just wrapped. Some have the blessing of Assange himself, while others do not.

Alex Gibney did not have Assange's backing.

We Steal Secrets falls in the second category. While Gibney worked in cooperation with Assange initially, the working relationship broke down when the WikiLeaks founder asked for $1 million for his interview. Gibney, however, doesn’t pay his subjects. He explained for the Guardian: "[Assange] then came up with an outrageous idea: 'How about you spy on the other interview subjects and report back to me, because I want to know what they're saying.' I said, 'No. I can't do that for you. I don't work for you.' [Assange] said in a huff, 'I don't work for you, either.'"

Continue reading: 'We Steal Secrets,' WikiLeaks Documentary Lacks The Support Of Julian Assange

Having exposed institutions like Enron, the U.S. Army, and Congress, Academy Award winner Alex Gibney now tells the gripping story of what happens when an incredibly small group of people decide to break open the intelligence vaults of the most powerful nation on the planet.

We Steal Secrets is set for its premiere at The Sundance Film Festival, which opened its doors on Jan 17th, and finishes up on Jan 27th, in Utah. Robert Redford founded the film festival in 1985 as an offshoot of his Sundance Institute that offers professional support to indie filmmakers. That first year, the festival showed a couple of dozen films. This year, Sundance is playing 119 feature films from 32 countries, culled from about 4,000 that were submitted. "It's gotten pretty overwhelming," Redford said. "I never dreamed when we started -- we didn't even know that we would last -- and then when it lasted and grew, it became huge. I never anticipated that it would get to this size."

Continue reading: We Steal Secrets: The Story Of Wikileaks (Clip)

Mea Maxima Culpa: Silence In The House of God is the new movie by Oscar winning filmmaker Alex Gibney, examining the abuse of power in the Catholic Church through the story of four courageous young men. In the first known case of public protest of its kind, they set out to expose the priest who abused them.

It's a gripping tale and their quest takes the group from Milwaukee to the churches of Ireland, all the way to the highest office of the Vatican. Though big-budget Oscar bait dominates this week's movie releases, it is Mea Maxima Culpa that holds the most positive set of reviews. Revered critic Roger Ebert said in the Chicago Sun-Times, "To someone who was raised and educated in the Catholic school system, as I was, a film like this inspires shock and outrage." Andrew O'Hehir of Salon.com as equally complimentary, writing, "Partly an inspiring saga of growing "deaf power" and human resilience, and partly a murky and fragmentary drama about an immense, closed-minded bureaucracy with paranoid and conspiratorial tendencies that finds itself unable to adjust to the modern world." The New York Times' A.O Scott congratulated Gibney on another superb documentary, writing, "There is something to be said for a clear and unblinking recitation of facts, and thankfully Mr. Gibney does a lot of that."

Gibney has sensational form with documentaries; Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room was nominated for the Oscar for Best Documentary in 2005, while Client 9: The Rise of Fall of Eliot Spitzer was shortlisted in 2011. Taxi to the Dark Side also won the award in 2007, focusing on an innocent taxi driver who was tortured and killed at Braham Air Force Base in Afghanistan in 2002.

Continue reading: Mea Maxima Culpa: A Murky Tale With A Bright Future

Girl Rising, a documentary focusing on female education and featuring narration from Anne Hathaway and Meryl Streep, will kick-start CNN's feature-length documentary series, the network announced on Monday (October 8, 2012). The movie, directed by Richard E. Robbins, follows seven girls around the world who seek to overcome obstacles and follow their dreams.

The new documentary division - CNN Films - will develop features that "examine an array of political, social, and economic subject matters," with deals already in place for documentarians Alex Gibney and Andrew Rossi to develop original features for the network. Its looks to be a pretty sweet gig for the pair - getting paid to go out and make documentaries without the need to find financial backing, or a distributor is pretty rare, though they know all about that. Both are Oscar-winning documentary makers, Gibney is best known for 'Taxi To The Dark Side, Enron: The Smartest Guys In The Room and Client 9, while Rossi's credits including Page One: Inside The New York Times and Fall Of Eliot Spitzer.

Girl Rising will air in the spring of 2013 with other movies following shortly afterwards. While the films will initially air on CNN, the network has plans to enter them in international film festivals and distribute them to theaters, according to TVGuide.com.