War Game – Co-directors Jesse Moss and Tony Gerber | Film School Radio hosted by Mike Kaspar

WAR GAME sweeps audiences into an elaborate future-set simulation that dramatically escalates the threat posed by the January 6, 2021 insurrection. The film follows a bipartisan group of US defense, intelligence, and elected policymakers spanning five presidential administrations as they participate in an unscripted role-play exercise. Portraying a fictional President of the United States and his advisors, they confront a political coup backed by rogue members of the US military in the wake of a contested 2024 presidential election. Like actors in a thriller, but with profound real-world stakes, the players have only six hours to save American democracy. Some of the participants included; WAR GAME co-directors Jesse Moss (Boys State, Girls State, The Overnighters) and Tony Gerber (Full Battle Rattle, Notorious Mr. Bout, Kingdom of the White Wolf, Jane) join us for a spirited conversation on how they came into this project, the importance of VET VOICE in making this possible, the very challenging logistics of capturing the intensity of the exercise and how seriously all the participants were in regard to playing their individual roles.

About the filmmaker – Co-Director / Writer / Producer Jesse Moss co-directed Girls State and Boys State with Amanda McBaine for Apple Original Films. Girls State premiered at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival and is currently streaming on Apple TV+. Boys State won the Grand Jury Prize at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival, the 2021 Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Documentary, and was shortlisted for the Academy Award. It was released by Apple and A24. Barack Obama included Boys State on his list of favorite movies of 2020. Moss’s film The Mission, also co-directed with Amanda McBaine for National Geographic Documentary Films, premiered at the 2023 Telluride Film Festival and is streaming worldwide on Disney+. He directed The Overnighters, which won the Special Jury Prize at the 2014 Sundance Film Festival, was shortlisted for the Academy Award, and released by Drafthouse Films and Netflix. He has twice been nominated by the DGA for Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Documentary. His past work with Netflix includes The Family, a 5-part series, and Payday, an episode of the series Dirty Money. In 2008, he co-directed Full Battle Rattle with Tony Gerber, which premiered at the Berlin International Film Festival and won the Special Jury Prize at SXSW.

About the filmmaker – Co-Director / Writer Tony Gerber is an Emmy and PGA award-winning writer, producer, and director. His directing credits include Full Battle Rattle (SXSW Special Jury Prize) with Jesse Moss, The Notorious Mr. Bout (BBC Storyville,) CNN Films’ We Will Rise: Michelle Obama’s Mission to Educate Girls Around the World (Television Academy Honors, CINÉ Golden Eagle) and the limited series Kingdom of the White Wolf filmed on location in the High Arctic for National Geographic, streaming on Disney+. He is a producer on Brett Morgan’s Jane (PGA Award and Primetime Emmy) and the Emmy-nominated, Oscar-shortlisted documentaryTakeover currently being adapted into a feature film for the Independent Studio Sister. In 2005 he co-founded Market Road Films with two-time Pulitzer-Prize winning playwright Lynn Nottage.

VET VOICE (statement) – Founded in 2009, the mission of Vet Voice Foundation is to empower veterans and military families to have a voice in our democracy by providing them with the support, training and tools to shape policy and impact outcomes in their communities. Core to our mission is protecting democracy and the Constitutional rule of law. When we put on the uniform, we swore an oath to protect and defend the Constitution – not a person, not a political party. That oath lives on, even when we take the uniform off. The exercise we undertook on January 6, 2023, which is the subject of War Game, was our most ambitious effort yet to help ensure that our government and military are well-prepared to defend our Republic when it may be at its most vulnerable. While the lessons learned were privately delivered to top government officials, the documentary is a crucially important vehicle to inform the public about the very real threat of domestic extremism and hyper-polarization, and how it will take all of us to defend our democracy from those who would seek to destroy it. Vet Voice Foundation is a non-profit, non-partisan organization, organized under Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code of 1986, as amended, for charitable and educational purposes.

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Reviews:

“A briskly paced, compelling docu-thriller perfectly timed for another hotly contentious election year in the United States… As engaging as it is thought-provoking, War Game should attract US media and international outlets with an appetite for America’s instability, as well as news junkies who do not already get enough drama from the real world.” – Anthony Kaufman, Screen International

“The movie takes viewers inside the three branches of the simulation, showcasing the intense decision-making techniques of people who’ve actually been read-in on some of the gravest moments in our country’s recent history.” – Jada Yuan, Washington Post

“Chilling. A political thriller in documentary form. Moss and Gerber clearly understand that the ticktock of this hypothetical insurgency will make for exciting cinema… [An] excellent film.” – Bilge Ebiri, Vulture

“Plays like a riveting political thriller. Chilling and engrossing. [A] feeling of anxiety courses through the entirety of the 94-minute doc, which moves with ruthless precision… Sweeping, realistic, and theatrically escalating, ‘War Game’ is a must-watch and really enthralling stuff. [A-] – Rodrigo Perez, The Playlist

“Both exciting and absolutely terrifying.” – David Fear, Rolling Stone