Exclusive Trailer for the Celebrated Documentary WTO/99 Depicts a Significant Protest

      Debuting at the prestigious True/False festival and nominated for a Critics Choice Documentary Award, Ian Bell’s celebrated archival documentary WTO/99 examines the confrontation between the then-emerging World Trade Organization (WTO) and over 40,000 demonstrators who flooded the streets of Seattle in 1999 to protest the WTO’s effects on the environment, human rights, and labor. It will make its NYC premiere at DOC NYC this Friday, followed by its European premiere at IDFA next week, and will commence an Oscar-qualifying run at DCTV’s Firehouse Cinema in NY on December 5. We are excited to present the exclusive first trailer.

      “From November 30th to December 3rd, 1999, tens of thousands of individuals occupied downtown Seattle to express their concerns regarding the World Trade Organization and its repercussions on the environment, human rights, and labor, marking the largest protests against economic globalization in US history,” the synopsis states. “These demonstrations united diverse groups—anarchists, environmentalists, labor organizations, consumer advocates, pro-democracy factions, and even faith-based groups. The protesters engaged in direct actions, hoping to persuade global leaders to withdraw their support for the WTO and aimed to draw public attention to the kind of future the WTO would impose.”

      It further explains, “Drawing from approximately 1000 hours of archival footage, WTO/99 revives the ideological battles that encouraged thousands to take to the streets of Seattle in pursuit of a better future. The film serves as an immersive visual document of a week that united 40,000 people to raise alarms about environmental degradation, the diminishing middle class, and the implications of China’s full membership in the World Trade Organization on our shared future. The demonstrators—viewed as an unruly disturbance at the time but appearing prophetic now—were confronted with extreme violence from a militarized police force, a fitting introduction to a new century now marked by the US's inability to tackle climate change, deindustrialization, and rising state aggression.”

      Watch the exclusive trailer below.