WORLD WAR 3.0.
Hard-working filmmaker Alex Gibney took on a complicated issue and we all face a bit of uphill climbing before we get into it. This is the story of ”Olympic Games”, a cyber warfare operation allegedly started by the U.S. and Israel in 2006 that created Stuxnet, a computer worm designed to strike at Iran’s nuclear program. Stuxnet destroyed centrifuges and delayed Iran’s program. This groundbreaking type of warfare has not been acknowledged by the U.S. government, so there are limits to how much we find out from this documentary. But interviews with high-ranking officials and experts, as well as an anonymous NSA employee, shed light on the history of ”Olympic Games” and its side effects. Interesting, and disturbing; illustrations clarify the technical aspects of how Stuxnet works.
2016-U.S. 116 min. Color. Produced by Alex Gibney, Olga Kuchmenko, Marc Shmuger. Written and directed by Alex Gibney.
Last word: “As a documentarian, you want to be looking both at what’s happened, but also what’s coming. Stuxnet was the perfect story for that, because it’s something that had happened, but nobody had fully appreciated its impact, and its influence on where we were headed. It was finding that in the story that was so important. Also, in this case, finding formal ways to show something that almost couldn’t be shown. I mean, my main character in this film was code, and my other main character was completely anonymous. [Laughs] That’s one for a student. ‘Here. Make a movie where your main character is a series of numbers, and your other main character is completely anonymous. Good luck.'” (Gibney on the challenge of making the film, Deadline)
