The Brink is a startling new documentary directed and filmed by Alison Klayman (Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry, Take Your Pills) that follows former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon as he takes his effort to spread extreme nationalism from the U.S. to the rest of the world. With unprecedented access, Klayman’s fly-on-the-wall historical document employs a vérité approach that aims to expose Bannon’s tactics, including his relationship with the media. The Brink received its world premiere at the Sundance Film Festival and opens theatrically in New York at the IFC Center (and in Los Angeles) on Friday, March 29. A national expansion will follow.
In The Brink, when Steve Bannon leaves his position at the White House less than a week after the Charlottesville “Unite the Right” rally in August 2017, he is notorious for having saved the Trump campaign and bringing a far-right ideology into the highest echelons of American politics. Now unconstrained by an official post, he is free to peddle influence as a perceived kingmaker—who some say still has a direct line to the White House—in an effort to turn his brand of nationalism into a global movement.
The film follows Bannon through the 2018 mid-term elections in the U.S. and sheds light on his efforts to mobilize and unify far-right parties in order to win seats in the May 2019 European Parliamentary elections. To maintain his newfound power and influence, the former Goldman Sachs banker and media investor reinvents himself—as he has done many times before—this time as the self-appointed leader of a global “populist movement.” A keen manipulator of the press and gifted self-promoter, Bannon continues to draw headlines and protests wherever he goes, feeding the powerful myth on which his survival relies.
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