Terrifying and illuminating in equal measure, this documentary’s full title is After Truth: Disinformation and the Cost of Fake News. Well, fear not good readers, there’s no fake news on Must TV, just bang-on, honest and reliable tv reviews, starting with this one.
Anita Singh in The Telegraph thinks this film both “well-researched and depressing”. She says that film-maker Andrew Rossi has done a “good job of mapping out how these stories are fuelled by the alt-right. They were ridiculous figures – you had to laugh at Jacob Wohl, whose attempt to stage a press conference smearing FBI director Robert Mueller was so inept, it could have been a spoof documentary.”
In the Evening Standard Susannah Butter writes: “Through forthright interviews with the people pulling the strings and the victims of fake news, After Truth tries to understand the forces that drive it, but stops shy of offering solutions.” The filmmakers, she says, “tell a compelling story — one that you wish was fake news. This has devastating human costs.”
The New York Times’ James Poniewozik says that After Truth is not just against the spreaders of fake news, but also argues sympathetically that “disinformation hurts the people who believe in it and are sometimes moved to act drastically on it. But of course, the obstacle to any solution is built into the film’s premise. Even if any of these true believers somehow end up watching After Truth, they can always declare it more fake news.”
We think this timely film, which originally aired on HBO in the US in March, is not only a Must, but also a Should.
First shown June 2020. You can watch the trailer by pressing play on the show image, or by clicking here.
