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Libertarian Movies, Films & Documentaries

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Netflix All Quiet On The Western Front A Winner

UPDATE: Netflix All Quiet on the Western Front has been nominated for NINE Academy Awards: Best Picture, International Feature Film, Writing (Adapted), Cinematography, Music, Production Design, Makeup and Hairstyling, Sound, Visual Effects.

The film is getting very good reviews, some comparing it to the acclaimed 1930 Best Picture version. Let’s hope they’re seeing it in Russia.

“A chilling piece of anti-war filmmaking.”
–The Playlist

“[Director] Berger proves here that All Quiet on the Western Front still packs a very loud punch.”
–Deadline

“A beautiful, horrifying new take on the classic anti-war story.”
–The Wrap

Anthem Film Festival Seeking New Libertarian Films

The 2023 Anthem Film Festival — the annual screening of the latest libertarian films and documentaries — will be held at The Renasant Convention Center, Memphis, Tennessee, July 12-15. It is part of the larger FreedomFest event.

The festival is currently seeking libertarian films for its 2023 event. “We seek movies and documentaries about self-reliance, innovation, entrepreneurship, individual rights, and the triumph of persuasion over force. Libertarian films often point out the unintended consequences of government intervention, but they’re just as likely to be about a protagonist’s personal struggle for self-expression or self-reliance.”  You can learn more about the submission process here. THE FINAL DEADLINE FOR SUBMISSION IS APRIL 6th, 2023.

Not sure if your film is right for this event? Check out this list of film festival winners for the years 2011-2022.

John Hurt: Libertarian Film Hero

John Hurt — born January 22nd, 1940 — was an English actor whose career spanned over half a century. He made three films of libertarian interest, all of them focused on the dangers of totalitarian states, and all of them among the most dead-on libertarian films ever made. Two are included in this website’s top 25 list and the third is included in other libertarian top lists.

In 1982, Hurt starred in the Disney Classic Night Crossing, the true story of an heroic and ingenious father who organized an escape for his family from East Germany to the West via a homemade hot air balloon. This suspenseful Disney movie is a terrific family film and a good reminder of what life was like for ordinary Germans under socialism.

He made the powerful film 1984 in that very year. Based on the Orwell novel, it depicts a future totalitarian society—bleak in every aspect, thoroughly controlled, and impossible to escape. The novel was intended as a warning on the dangers of concentrated power. John Hurt helped spread that message to a new generation. This is considered the definitive 1984 film adaptation.

And in 2005, John Hurt acted in V for Vendetta, which in that year won a special Prometheus Award. About the film, the Libertarian Futurist Society commented: “The movie is so full of anti-authoritarian messages that it is hard to see them all in only a single viewing. Any movie about fear and the use of fear to control a populous and the resulting tyranny would be of interest to libertarians. One as well made and timely as V for Vendetta with such a fine script, great acting and focused directing deserves our attention.”

John Hurt lived a life in which he appreciated his freedom and bristled at encroachments on it, particularly with regard to political correctness. To judge by the film roles he chose, he was one of those people with, at the very least, anti-authoritarian instincts, and a desire for people to simply be more tolerant and kinder to each other (he also starred in Elephant Man and The Naked Civil Servant).

In 2017, he died of pancreatic cancer. But his memorable performances and the characters he portrayed live on.

Links

IMDB
Wikipedia

Comedian’s Oxford Union Speech Blows Away Woke

Konstantin Kisin, a Russian-British comedian and political commentator, was invited to speak at the Oxford Union on the subject of wokeness. His speech was so brilliant and so elegantly expressed that it has so far been viewed over 5 million times on YouTube. Kisin has a podcast here.

Michael Cieply: US Political Crisis MIA At Sundance

Movie Critic Michael Cieply, a veteran of the New York Times, noted in a Deadline article what’s missing at the Sundance Film Festival. “Almost entirely missing from the many documentaries listed in last month’s 99-film announcement of Sundance features is any attempt to confront a growing sense that government—even in ostensibly free nations like the United States of America—is still, and again, overstepping its bounds while abandoning fundamental duties. Nothing here about the FBI and its pressures on social media, nor about the suppression of inconvenient truth (whether touching on Covid vaccines or Hunter Biden’s lap-top), nor about federal meddling in the interface between school boards and angry parents. For that matter, homeless camps, street crime, permissive prosecutors, porous borders, grocery prices and election security or disenfranchisement (depending on how you view it), all at issue in the national debate, are either absent, or hidden from the casual reader of festival synopses. In all, the Sundance documentarians seem to be nesting in festival orthodoxy while the world churns outside. An overriding concern in Park City is identity.” On the plus side, there is an alternative film festival where those issues are more likely to be featured.

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About Miss Liberty

This site is a collection of films and documentaries of particular interest to libertarians (and those interested in libertarianism). It began as a book, Miss Liberty’s Guide to Film: Movies for the Libertarian Millennium, where many of the recommended films were first reviewed. The current collection has grown to now more than double the number in that original list, and it’s growing still.