A workforce of investigative journalists in Europe has revealed a brand new report that hyperlinks Oscar-winning filmmaker Oliver Stone to a deliberate collection of documentaries meant to behave as de facto propaganda for a number of autocratic leaders worldwide.
The investigation, a joint effort by the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Undertaking (OCCRP), German public broadcaster ZDF, Austria newspaper Der Commonplace, German information journal Der Spiegel, and unbiased Kazakhstan media outlet Vlast, discovered that Russian-American producer Igor Lopatonok pitched a collection of hagiographic documentaries about such infamous leaders as Belarus strongman Alexander Lukashenko, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, which had been to star Stone because the on-air interviewer.
In an interview with OCCRP, Lopatonok mentioned Stone was conscious of the tasks and supported them, although the investigation didn’t flip up a direct hyperlink to the director to help that declare. The investigative group mentioned they repeatedly reached out to Stone for remark however haven’t obtained a reply.
The Hollywood Reporter has additionally reached out to Stone for remark.
Lopatonok has produced a number of documentaries along with Stone, which characteristic the Platoon and JFK director as an on-air interviewer, together with the pro-Russian docs Ukraine on Hearth and Revealing Ukraine, and Qazaq: Historical past of the Golden Man, a characteristic documentary and eight-hour TV collection about Nursultan Nazarbayev, who dominated Kazakhstan for practically three many years. Qazaq, which screened on the Rome Worldwide Movie Competition in 2021, was known as out on the time for its reportedly sycophantic remedy of Nazarbayev. The documentary didn’t embody interviews with any Nazarbayev critics and Stone didn’t query the Kazakh chief about widespread allegations of human rights abuses.
Stone and Lopatonok had beforehand denied that the Kazakh authorities was behind Qazaq, however the OCCRP investigation uncovered a paper path linking the regime to funds of not less than $5 million earmarked for the movie and collection. Elbasy, a basis run by Nazarbayev’s daughter which was based and is managed by Nazarbayev, transferred the $5 million to the government-run State Heart for Help of Nationwide Cinema, which in flip paid the Qazaq manufacturing firm.
Stone has developed a specific line in dictator documentaries, with largely softball non-fiction remedies of the late Cuban dictator Fidel Castro (Castro in Winter from 2012) and Venezuelan chief Hugo Chavez (2014’s Mi Amigo Hugo). And, years earlier than Tucker Carlson ventured to Moscow, Stone did a collection of interviews with Russian President Vladimir Putin for the 2017 doc challenge The Putin Interviews.
The brand new investigation suggests Lopatonok was utilizing Stone’s popularity as a sympathetic interviewer of autocrats to pitch a collection of fawning documentaries, to be financed by the dictators themselves. The paperwork examined by the investigative workforce, a few of which have been shared with The Hollywood Reporter, put Stone entrance and middle, pitching the Snowden director as somebody with “a novel experience within the space of presenting ex-Soviet Union leaders to a Western viewers.”
Not one of the paperwork, which embody e-mail correspondence between Lopatonok and Stone, point out Stone was immediately concerned in these pitches or was even conscious of most of them. Not one of the documentary tasks had been made.
An e-mail alternate between members of Lopatonok’s workforce, cited by the OCCRP report, suggests Stone had initially agreed to take part in not less than one of many tasks, a documentary on Belarus dictator Lukashenko, earlier than the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, seems to have led him to drag out.
“Sadly, the [Belarus] challenge was placed on pause due to Oliver’s refusal,” wrote producer Igor Kobzev to a crew member in June of that yr. The OCCRP says Kobzev didn’t reply to a request for remark.
The report quotes an unnamed supply inside Lopatonok’s movie firm explaining the monetary idea behind the documentaries as providing dictators a way to purchase a type of popularity laundering, utilizing Stone’s title to accumulate “legitimacy on the world stage.”
Within the pitch deck to Azerbaijani chief Aliyev, Lopatonok notes the “Oliver Stone documentary” would have a “distinctive optimistic affect on the publicity of [the] president and Azerbaijan.”
“There’s a star — Stone — who may be offered. That’s it,” the OCCRP quotes the insider as saying. “They’re being purchased for trinkets, solely the trinkets are Oliver Stone. The targets soar on it: ‘Oh, I’m with Oliver Stone! I’ll be proven everywhere in the world!’”
