Assassination of U.S. President George W. Bush

Film depicts fictional killing of Bush

British movie to debut at Toronto filmfest

Melissa Leong, National Post, with files from news services
Published: Friday, September 01, 2006

A controversial mock documentary showing the imagined assassination of U.S. President George W. Bush will debut at the Toronto International Film Festival next week and be aired on a British television channel next month.

The British film, Death of a President, which the festival refers to as D.O.A.P., mixes archival footage and computer-generated imagery to give a chillingly realistic representation of a killing.

In the film, the president makes a speech to business leaders in Chicago and faces a massive anti-war demonstration. He is shot by a sniper as he leaves the venue, and the investigation into his killing focuses on a Syrian-born man.

The 93-minute film acts as an investigative documentary made years after the 2007 killing and features protesters outside the Chicago hotel, suspects in the shooting, the Secret Service men who failed to protect their charge, the press and an array of experts.

"This is easily the most dangerous and breathtakingly original film I have encountered this year," Noah Cowan, co-director of the film festival, wrote in an online description of the film.

"As one might expect, [director Gabriel Range] is ultimately interested in addressing today's political issues through the lens of the future ... The film is never a personal attack on Bush; Range simply seeks to explore the potential consequences that might follow from the President's policies and actions."

The film's producers hope to sell the rights to broadcast Death of a President in the United States after its debut.

Death of a President will be aired on Channel Four's digital channel More4 on Oct. 9 in Britain. Peter Dale, head of More4, said the drama was a "thought-provoking critique" of contemporary U.S. society.

He added: "It's an extraordinarily gripping and powerful piece of work, a drama constructed like a documentary that looks back at the assassination of George Bush as the starting point for a very gripping detective story.

"It's a pointed political examination of what the war on terror did to the American body politic.

"I'm sure that there will be people who will be upset by it, but when you watch it you realize what a sophisticated piece of work it is.

"It's not sensationalist or simplistic, but a very thought-provoking, powerful drama. I hope people will see that the intention behind it is good."

A White House spokesperson told Entertainment Tonight Canada that the film "doesn't dignify a response."

Mr. Range's first experiment with the style -- combining real footage and a fictional storyline -- was a 2003 film called The Day Britain Stopped, which looked at the results of Britain's transit grid shutting down.

The Toronto International Film Festival begins on Sept. 7. It is also screening the film The Prisoner or: How I Planned to Kill Tony Blair. The film uses a comic-book motif to tell the story of an Iraqi cameraman's wrongful arrest and interrogation by U.S. forces.

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