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Short filmTranscript
00:00 [MUSIC PLAYING]
00:03 Hi, I'm Jesse Moss.
00:06 And I'm Tony Gerber.
00:07 And we're the directors of "War Game,"
00:09 a documentary that's premiering at Sundance in the special
00:13 screenings category.
00:14 [MUSIC PLAYING]
00:18 Like a lot of Americans, we're still
00:19 trying to make sense of what happened on January 6, 2021
00:23 with the insurrection.
00:24 And a little over a year ago, I found out
00:27 that a veterans organization, VetVoice,
00:29 was going to conduct a very unusual "War Game"
00:33 simulation of the next insurrection, in which
00:36 the US military fragments.
00:39 And some members of the military throw their support
00:41 behind the losing presidential candidate.
00:43 And this struck me as a fascinating exercise,
00:46 as a way to confront and think about the January 6
00:50 insurrection and what our political future is.
00:52 And I immediately reached out to my friend and fellow director,
00:55 Tony Gerber.
00:56 We had a cast of 40, a crew of 80, six cinematographers,
01:00 with the action unfolding simultaneously
01:03 in four different locations.
01:05 It was important for us to co-direct,
01:07 because the production challenge was enormous.
01:10 We couldn't direct the participants,
01:11 but we could direct the camera operators.
01:14 So seeing every camera angle simultaneously
01:16 on a bank of monitors, it was like having
01:19 a beautiful giant train set.
01:21 It's like having a ringside seat at the White House Situation
01:24 Room with the president managing the gravest
01:26 national crisis.
01:27 And the adrenaline rush of doing that kind of work
01:31 is extraordinary.
01:32 [MUSIC PLAYING]
01:37 We could build a simulation of the White House Situation Room,
01:41 this command bunker where the president manages his crises.
01:46 And we could do it with great fidelity
01:48 by bringing in a theatrical designer
01:50 to help us realize that vision.
01:52 And that voice felt that the more versatility
01:55 there was in that environment, the better
01:57 the performances of these role players would be.
02:00 It was a bit of a gamble in terms
02:02 of turning this into a film.
02:03 Was it going to be engaging?
02:06 Was it going to feel like inside baseball?
02:08 Or was it going to feel like a thriller?
02:10 And I think at the end of the day, it is a thriller.
02:12 The emotion was real.
02:14 The fear was real.
02:16 The passion and the stakes were all real.
02:19 And although these are non-actors not acting,
02:23 there's an incredible truth to their performance.
02:26 They know their roles because they've lived them.
02:29 We had a former governor, two US senators, retired generals,
02:33 veterans of the CIA, the Department of Homeland Security,
02:35 and the Department of Defense.
02:37 We are so polarized and so partisan.
02:40 What's unique about this project, this exercise,
02:42 the group of people who were brought together,
02:44 they're from both sides of the aisle politically.
02:47 We shot most of it in one day, in real time, six hours.
02:50 But it took a year to edit.
02:52 We worked really hard to keep the action present and immersive,
02:56 breaking out only occasionally for historical context
03:00 and character insight.
03:01 The backstories of all of the people involved
03:03 in this war game are fascinating.
03:06 Many of them are military veterans.
03:08 They're great patriots and really trying to save democracy.
03:11 They see democracy as under threat.
03:13 I think we're also traumatized by January 6, 2021,
03:17 and the imagery of insurrectionists
03:18 overrunning the Capitol.
03:19 It's really hard to look at.
03:21 And I think the power of this film is it provides another way
03:24 of looking at where we are as a country
03:26 and our divisions and our strengths, too.
03:29 It's a way of engaging with the trauma
03:33 without looking directly at it.
03:35 You know, in the end, the catharsis
03:38 for both our role players and the audience is real.
03:41 In that way, it's also like live theater.
03:43 It's not complete until there's an audience in front of it.
03:46 And it's going to be very exciting to hear
03:49 the reaction of an audience to this film.
03:51 Yeah, I can't wait.
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04:04 [BLANK_AUDIO]