Next up in HamptonsFilm’s SummerDocs series is something different: not a conventional documentary, but a documentary-like simulation of a crisis, inspired by Jan. 6, 2021. In this election year, it couldn’t be more timely.
“War Game,” directed by Jesse Moss and Tony Gerber, is set on Jan. 6, 2025, as members of the U.S. military defect to support the losing candidate. Meanwhile, the winning candidate and his advisers hunker down in the White House Situation Room to “war-game” the crisis. They have six hours to save democracy as the country teeters on the brink of civil war.
Among the real-life political figures playing the president’s advisers are Heidi Heitkamp, a former senator from North Dakota; Lt. Col. (ret.) Alexander Vindman, former member of the National Security Council; Maj. Gen. (ret.) Linda Singh, formerly of the Maryland National Guard, and Gen. (ret.) Wesley Clark, former NATO Supreme Allied Commander. The president is played by Steve Bullock, the governor of Montana from 2013 to 2021.
“The unique grammar of the film — part cinema verité, part political thriller, part dystopian sci-fi — in which real people improvise their characters and write the story in real-time, in a drama with the highest possible stakes, struck us as exciting and important,” said the directors in a statement.
Writing in Variety, Siddhant Adlakha called the film a “nerve-wracking documentary” that “serves as a warning that if history repeats itself, the difference between doing so as farce or tragedy rests on a knife’s edge.”
The screening will take place at the East Hampton Cinema on Saturday at 7 p.m. A question-and-answer session with the directors will follow.
