My Scientology Movie (2015)
My Scientology Movie (2015)
Month: November 2015
Official Selection London Film Festival 2015
Director: John Dower
Producers: Simon Chinn, Joe Oppenheimer, Charlotte Moore
BBC Films, Red Box Films
Best Film, NME Awards 2016
Reviews

All sorts of weird stuff starts happening as Theroux reiterates the sheer nastiness of the organisation in his provocative documentary
The Church of Scientology is a deeply strange organisation and, appropriately enough, Louis Theroux has made a strange film about it. It works as a companion piece to another documentary, the one that I think is the definitive takedown: Alex Gibney’s Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief, from 2015. It’s an interesting, if flawed piece of work; Theroux’s opaque manner masks an uncertainty as to exactly what he wants to say, and he finally seems to turn on his own chief witness.Theroux’s Scientology movie is undoubtedly a smart piece of what could be called improv-ocation. He shows up in LA, advertising his intention to film a series of scripted and unscripted scenes recreating key moments from the life of the Scientologists’ sinister chief, David Miscavige. (Theroux may here have been inspired by Josh Oppenheimer’s modern-classic documentary about the Indonesian tyranny, The Act of Killing.) He will audition actors, film the audition process, and use as his adviser a famous apostate and whistleblower, former Scientologist enforcer Marty Rathbun – a man now hated in the church for his betrayal.
The Guardian
Being AP (2015)
Month: November 2015
Official Selection Toronto Film Festival
Director: Anthony Wonke
Producers: Nick Ryle, John Woolcombe
BBC Films, Irish Film Board
Feature documentary
Reviews
