Jasper Rees

Sexed-up pacifism

What exactly is the point of this earnest documentary surveying the anti-war marches of 2003?

Thousands of protesters gather for an anti-war demonstration in New York, 2003. Photo by Mario Tama/Getty Images 
issue 23 May 2015

Big-screen documentaries never change the world. Blackfish has not shortened the queues to see maltreated killer whales leap through hoops at SeaWorld. Super Size Me reduced neither the all-American waistline nor the profit margin of McDonald’s. The Cove did not prevent the Japan whale industry slaughtering dolphins. So what possible chance, more than a decade after Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11, has a mere film of bringing about that most chimerical of holy grails: an admission that the case for invading Iraq was knowingly built on a lie?

We Are Many revisits the anti-war marches of 15 February 2003.

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