Past screening

The Unknown Known

Directed by: Errol Morris
Runtime: 1hr 42min Year: 2013
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Directed by: Errol Morris
Runtime: 1hr 42min Year: 2013
Country: United States
Last Screened: Wed 19th Mar 2014

Legendary filmmaker Errol Morris offers a gripping exploration of the controversial career and philosophy of Donald Rumsfeld, former U.S Secretary of Defence, and a principal architect of the Iraq war.

“The unknown knowns – things that you possibly may know that you don’t know you know”- Donald Rumsfeld

Donald Rumsfeld, congressman for over fifty years, advisor to four presidents and so-called principal architect of the Iraq war, has never been short for words. Renowned for his linguistic gymnastics, and an uncanny ability to use rhetoric to bewitch and befuddle, how will Rumsfeld fare under the penetrating gaze of Oscar-winning director Errol Morris (The Thin Blue Line, The Fog of War, Tabloid)?

Morris allows Rumsfeld to take the stage as the writer/performer of his own life, using the many thousands of internal memos he calls ‘snowflakes’. But as Morris pulls him back to retrace controversial flashpoints such as the invasion of Iraq, accusations of torture, and the revelations of Abu Ghraib, their conversation becomes a cat-and-mouse game of argument and counterargument, evidence and evasion. An utterly mesmerising portrait, taking us beyond Rumsfeld’s infamous web of words and into the unfamiliar terrain of his mind.