An extended covert documentary on sexual misconduct allegations against Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh premiered this year. Sundance Film Festival.
justiceA last-minute addition to the schedule, intended to shine a light not only on the women who accused Kavanagh, Donald Trump’s nominee, but also those who failed. FBI investigation on the charges.
“I hope it triggers outrage,” producer Amy Hardy said at a Q&A after the premiere in Park City, Utah. “I hope it triggers action, I hope it triggers further investigation with real subpoena powers.”
The film provides a timeline of the allegations, beginning with Kavanaugh being accused of sexual harassment by Christine Blasey Ford when she was 15 and he was 17. She alleged that he held her on the bed and tried to tear her clothes. Before she ran away. Cavanaugh was also accused of sexual assault by Deborah Ramirez, who allegedly exposed himself without her consent at a college party and shoved his penis in her face.
Cavanaugh has denied the allegations. He declined the request to participate in the documentary.
The first scene features Ford, half-off-camera, being interviewed by the film’s director, Doug Liman, whose credits include Mr. & Mrs. Smith and The Bourne Identity. Justice includes numerous interviews with journalists, lawyers, psychologists and people who knew Ford and Ramirez.
Liman said, ‘This is the kind of movie where people get scared. “The people who choose to participate in the film are the heroes.”
Ramirez in the film, who previously told his story to Ronan Farrow in the New YorkerShe also shared her story on camera. Ramirez has been referred to as someone “they worked hard to keep people from knowing”, his story was not given the space it deserved until Kavanaugh was confirmed in court in October 2018.
Ramirez details a Catholic upbringing before explaining that her high grades brought her to Yale in the mid-’80s, when the university was slowly diversifying its student body. In addition to being admitted only 15 years after women were allowed, Ramírez was also biracial and working class. “My mother was worried,” she recalls emotionally in the documentary.
Friends at the time referred to her as “sweet and Bambi-like” and “innocent to a fault”, but Ramirez tried to fit in by becoming a cheerleader and drinking with her friends. This, she says, brought her into the class of Cavanaugh, who came from a privileged family and was known at the time as a heavy drinker (she is referred to as the “most drunk” person in the film). . Ramirez recounts the alleged incident, when she was drunk and, she says, touched Cavanaugh’s penis, which he held near her face, without her consent.
The film then details how the circles around Ramirez and Kavanaugh reacted, showing text messages discussing Ramirez’s allegations as they were about to become public, detailing a mutual friend who asked Kavanaugh to go on the record to defend him. Another friend refers to it as a “cover-up”.
The New Yorker included a statement from a group of students in support of Kavanagh. A year later, the film shows that two of them emailed The New Yorker to remove their names from the statement.
Ramirez’s lawyers claimed they had contacted Republican Senator Jeff Flake, who was involved in Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearing, to explain to him what had happened. The next day, Flake called for a delay in confirmation and a weeks-long FBI investigation.
But the film details how the FBI failed to call several witnesses recommended by Ramirez’s lawyers. The footage shows the filmmakers meeting with a confidential source who plays a tape of Kavanaugh’s classmate Max Stier, now a nonprofit figure in Washington, who saw Kavanaugh engaging in a similar act of alleged drug exposure with a woman. Students at a dorm party at Yale. The woman chose to remain anonymous and this is the first time she has heard the recording.
It was made during the week that the FBI investigated Kavanagh, and although Stier informed them, they were unable to speak to him. “You’re not talking to that guy, you’re not talking to anybody,” Liman said during the Q&A.
The FBI tip line that was set up is referred to as “a graveyard”. 4,500 suggestions were sent directly to the White House rather than being investigated. This is called another “cover-up”.
The filmmakers also spoke to other accused who alleged abuse but could not be included in the film. “We’ve talked to people with other allegations, and we’ve been very careful and thorough, and it’s not to discredit them — but you’re able to corroborate the stories that you see here,” Hardy told the audience.
Judged last year in secret, the NDA was signed by everyone involved. The project was self-financed by Liman, making his documentary debut. He explained The Hollywood Reporter The Supreme Court held “special meaning” for him, his father a lawyer and activist and his brother a federal judge. He was frustrated by the FBI investigation into Kavanaugh that “never happened”, and sought the help of noted documentary filmmakers Liz Garbus and Hardy, both with particular experience in films about sexual misconduct allegations, to do what he saw as unfinished business, if at all. Just started.
In the Q&A, he expressed the importance of secrecy, speaking of the “machinery set up against anyone who dares to speak out” and the awareness that this machinery would be activated in the film if made public.
“There used to be some kind of order,” he said. “This film would not be shown here.”
It was only screened at Sundance high-ups on Wednesday before being officially announced on Thursday. It premiered in sold-out cinemas on Friday.
Over the past few years, the festival has become a regular home for several investigative documentaries about alleged sex predators in the public eye. Figures like Michael Jackson, Bill Cosby, Russell Simmons and former Sundance mainstay Harvey Weinstein have all been spotlighted.
Since the verdict was announced, Hardy confirmed that they were getting “more tips,” which arrived just 30 minutes after the press release went out. Liman also said that the movie, which is looking for a distributor, needs to be expanded and re-edited.
Hardy added: “It’s not over.”
