Toronto Human Rights Watch Film Festival

Taxi to the Dark Side, made by the director of “Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room”, may be one of the most chilling indictments of the “war on terror” yet.

The film begins by sketching the circumstances surrounding the death of Dilawar, an Afghani cab driver detained and imprisoned by American troops. Four days after his arrival at Bagram Air Force Base, Dilawar was dead, and an autopsy revealed that he had been essentially beaten to death.

Taxi to the Dark Side expands its analysis to include Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo, culling the opinions and anecdotes of convicted soldiers, as well as legal experts, FBI specialists, and former prisoners (among the contributors are Senator Carl Levin, writer Alfred McCoy, and academic John Yoo), painting a damning picture of systemic abuse condoned by the highest level of the American government.

“Photos and video of torture at Bagram and Abu Ghraib are the most viscerally disturbing elements of Taxi to the Dark Side but the way soft-spoken soldiers were transformed into beasts with the tacit approval of the higher-ups is just as profoundly chilling” (Jay Weissberg, Variety).

Director Alex Gibney will introduce the film at the March 3rd screening at Jackman Hall, Art Gallery of Ontario.

Co-presented with HotDocs

Program notes by George Kaltsounakis