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Bitter Lake

Adam Curtis's epic film explains how everyone - Britain, America and Russia - got lost in Afghanistan. How a toxic blend of arrogance and ignorance led to the present disaster.

Politicians used to have the confidence to tell us stories that made sense of the chaos of world events. But now there are no big stories and politicians react randomly to every new crisis - leaving us bewildered and disorientated.

Bitter Lake is an adventurous and epic film by Adam Curtis that explains why the big stories that politicians tell us have become so simplified that we can鈥檛 really see the world any longer.

The narrative goes all over the world, America, Britain, Russia and Saudi Arabia - but the country at the heart of it is Afghanistan. Because Afghanistan is the place that has confronted our politicians with the terrible truth - that they cannot understand what is going on any longer.

The film reveals the forces that over the past thirty years rose up and undermined the confidence of politics to understand the world. And it shows the strange, dark role that Saudi Arabia has played in this.

But Bitter Lake is also experimental. Curtis has taken the unedited rushes of everything that the 麻豆社 has ever shot in Afghanistan - and used them in new and radical ways.

He has tried to build a different and more emotional way of depicting what really happened in Afghanistan. A counterpoint to the thin, narrow and increasingly destructive stories told by those in power today.

Release date:

5 weeks left to watch

20 minutes

Credits

Role Contributor
Writer Adam Curtis
Director Adam Curtis
Executive Producer Victoria Jaye
Producer Lucy Kelsall

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