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The Yes Men Are Revolting

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The Yes Men Are Revolting THE YES MEN ARE REVOLTING SYNOPSIS For the last 20 years, notorious activists the Yes Men (Mike Bonanno and Andy Bichlbaum) have staged outrageous and hilarious hoaxes to draw international attention to corporate crimes against humanity and the environment. Armed with nothing but thrift­store suits and a lack of shame, these iconoclastic revolutionaries lie their way into business events and government functions to expose the dangers of letting greed run our world. In their third cinematic outing (after The Yes Men and The Yes Men Fix The World), they are now well into their 40s, and their mid­life crises are threatening to drive them out of activism forever – even as they prepare to take on the biggest challenge they’ve ever faced, climate change. More than the first two installments, The Yes Men Are Revolting is as much a character study as it is an entertaining depiction of their latest interventions. Revealing the real people behind the ruses, at its heart lies a hopeful message about fighting for change. KEY CREATIVE PERSONNEL Laura Nix, Director and Producer Laura Nix directed and produced the documentary The Light in Her Eyes, which premiered at IDFA, was broadcast on the series POV on PBS, and toured the world as part of Sundance's Film Forward program. She co­wrote the Emmy­nominated PBS doc California State of Mind: The Legacy of Pat Brown, and her short­form nonfiction work has been shown on HBO, IFC, Planet Green, and the History Channel. She produced festival hit The Yes Men Fix the World, which was sold to HBO and won the audience award at the Berlinale. Previously, she directed the feature documentary Whether You Like It or Not: The Story of Hedwig, for New Line Cinema, which played in over a dozen film festivals in the US and worldwide. As a founding partner of Automat Pictures, Nix directed and produced dozens of non­fiction pieces for inclusion on major studio DVDs, including three documentaries commissioned by Sam Mendes for the movie Jarhead. Nix is also the writer/director of the narrative feature The Politics of Fur, which played in over 70 festivals internationally and won numerous awards, including the Grand Jury Prize at Outfest. The Yes Men, Directors Armed with nothing but quick wits and thrift store suits, the Yes Men impersonate big­time corporate criminals to draw attention to their crimes against humanity and the environment. Their outrageous satirical interventions at business events, on the internet, television, and in the streets form the basis of two award­winning feature documentaries, “The Yes Men” and “The Yes Men Fix the World”, festival favorites in Toronto, Berlin, SXSW and others. Their work has been shown in the Whitney Biennial, the Venice Biennale, ARS Electronica, and many other art exhibitions. They are the recipients of numerous awards, including Creative Time's Leonore Annenberg Prize for Art and Social Change, Grierson Documentary Award, Berlinale Panorama Audience Award, the United Nations Association Film Festival Grand Jury Award, Best Documentary Award at HBO Comedy Arts Festival, and the Audience Award at the International Documentary Festival Amsterdam. They are the authors of several books and many articles, and lecture internationally on art and social change. They are the founders of a nonprofit, the Yes Lab, and the Action Switchboard, an online platform for generating real­life direct actions in the service of social movements. Alan Hayling, Executive Producer Alan Hayling is an established documentary film producer and commissioner who has been working in the field since the early 1970s. Alan was Head of Documentaries at BBC Television from 2004­2006, and spent ten years as a Commissioning Editor in Channel 4’s documentary department from 1991 until 2001. Among the documentaries that Hayling initiated and executive produced himself at the BBC is the multi award­winning documentary Children of Beslan and the innovative and funny documentary series Mischief. At Channel 4 he worked closely with Michael Moore, commissioning his hit film Bowling for Columbine and his series The Awful Truth. Hayling also executive produced The Yes Men Fix the World. Alex Cooke is a documentary filmmaker and the co­founder and Chief Executive of Renegade Pictures. Among her films are Closing Guantanamo, about Obama’s failed promise to close Guantanamo within a year of taking office, The Governator, about Arnold Schwarzenegger’s first run for Governor of California, and the series Only in America. Prior to directing and founding Renegade, Alex was the programmer of the Sheffield Documentary Festival and a film editor. Adam McKay, Executive Producer McKay is a writer, director, and producer whose credits include Anchorman, Talladega Nights, Step Brothers, The Other Guys, The Campaign, and most recently, Anchorman: The Legend Continues. His upcoming projects include Undroppable, a documentary that tackles the dropout rate in our schools. McKay is a former head writer of Saturday Night Live and one of the founding members of the Upright Citizens Brigade. Other credits include writing for Michael Moore's show The Awful Truth and co­founding the comedy website Funny or Die with Will Ferrell. McKay also produces HBO's hit comedy series Eastbound and Down, now in its fourth season, through his and Ferrell’s company, Gary Sanchez Productions. In 2009 he took to the stage, directing the Tony nominated Broadway show You're Welcome America: A Final Night with George W. Bush. Motto Pictures (Julie Goldman and Christopher Clements), Co­Executive Producers Julie Goldman founded Motto Pictures in 2009. She has produced a wide range of award­winning documentaries, working with a lineup of talented and acclaimed filmmakers. Julie was nominated by the Producers Guild of America for the 2010 Producer of the Year Award. Recent producing credits include Sergio, the Academy Award­winning The Cove, Valentino The Last Emperor, and Sons of Perdition, which premiered on OWN in June. Other recent credits include: Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry, God Loves Uganda, A Place at the Table, and Buck. Prior to launching Motto Pictures, Goldman was Senior Vice President of Production and Co­Production at Wellspring Media and Head of Sales and Co­productions at First Run/Icarus Films. Christopher Clements has served as production/editorial consultant for Motto Pictures on a wide variety of films including: Beware of Mr. Baker directed by Jay Bulger, Our School directed by Mona Nicoara, Sons of Perdition directed by Jennilyn Merten and Tyler Measom, and Gideon's Army, directed by Dawn Porter, which won the US Documentary Editing Award at the 2013 Sundance Film Festival. Rita Dagher, Señorita Films, Co­Producer Dagher is an independent producer dedicated to the production of original, unique, and innovative feature films. Films she produced include Miss Julie, directed by Liv Ullmann; My Enemy’s Enemy, by Oscar­winner Kevin Macdonald; Terror’s Advocate, by Barbet Schroeder; and Pa­ra­da, by Marco Pontecorvo. She co­produced Oliver Stone’s Persona Non Grata, and was Associate Producer of Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11. She also served as Executive Producer of Chris Morris’s Four Lions, and Shadow Dancer directed by James Marsh. She worked from 2007 to 2012 as Head of Acquisition for the international sales arm of Wild Bunch. She is director of Senorita Films, Paris. Ole Tornbjerg, Chili Film, Co­Producer Since 2000, Tornbjerg has been working as a director and producer of TV documentaries and films about international issues. He has produced several prize­winning documentaries, including Blood in the Mobile, about conflict minerals in cell phones; Arif Hossein, ETV, Dhaka, about child workers in Bangladesh; and Diplomacy: The Responsibility to Protect, about the decision process of the UN Security Council in the Darfur case. Until 2000, Tornbjerg worked as a journalist for TV2 Denmark and DR (Danish Broadcasting Corporation). In 2007, he started his own production company, Chili Film. Pieter van Huystee, Pieter van Huystee Film, Co­Producer Pieter van Huystee founded his own production company in 1995 and has produced documentaries, feature films and single plays with well­known Dutch directors like Johan van der Keuken, Heddy Honigmann and Peter Delpeut. By combining daring with decisiveness, Pieter van Huystee Film has become one of the leading Dutch independent production companies, highly esteemed for the quality and wide range of its projects. In 1999 the distribution department Public Film was added, to release ‘Dutch Docs’ in local cinemas. Many van Huystee documentaries and features are screened at festivals all over the world, receiving many awards. Christian Beetz, Co­Producer Christian Beetz, author and CEO of beetz brothers filmproduction, is one of the leading documentary film producers in Germany. Under his leadership, beetz brothers filmproduction has realised more than 120 high­quality documentaries for the international market, which compete regularly at all major international film festivals and have won numerous prestigious awards, including three German Grimme Awards, an Oscar nomination in 2013, and a nomination for the International Emmy® Award in 2014. The focus of beetz brothers’ documentary output is in the fields of culture, history and society. Productions range from feature­film and television documentaries to docudramas, TV­series and cross­media formats. Geraud Brisson, Editor Geraud Brisson collaborated on narrative films such as The Great Debaters by Denzel Washington, Conviction by Tony Goldwyn, and Brothers by Jim Sheridan. His narrative and documentary work has been shown in festivals like Sundance (The Adventures of Power, 2008), Telluride (The Road of the Little Song, 2003) and Toronto International where From the Sky Down, directed by Davis Guggenheim, opened the festival in 2011. He recently edited the adaptation of Jack Kerouac’s Big Sur, directed by Michael Polish, and edited a piece for the Obama campaign directed by Davis Guggenheim.
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