Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11 was fraught with controversy well before it premiered at Cannes. Miramax parent company Disney didn’t want to finance or distribute what was clearly a partisan political film attacking the George W. Bush administration’s response to the 9/11 attacks, including its handling of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Miramax co-chairs Harvey and Bob Weinstein were forced to buy the rights and distribute the film themselves, with the help of Miramax rivals Lionsgate and IFC Films.
Even those who disagreed with Moore’s argument were moved (often, to anger) by the movie’s passion and narrative drive. Those qualities, and not its partisan politics, were what led a Cannes audience to give the film a 20-minute standing ovation, and a Cannes jury to give the movie its top prize. Or, so argued the 2004 Cannes jury’s American leader, Quentin Tarantino. (Four of the nine jurors that year were Americans.) Still, there was a sense that Cannes voters had broken with precedent, especially since Fahrenheit was the first documentary to win the top prize in half a century.
It went on to become the top-grossing documentary in history – at $222 million, no other non-fiction film has ever come close – though it also failed to persuade voters to avoid re-electing Bush that fall. Years later, Tarantino told an interviewer, “As time has gone on, I have put that decision under a microscope and I still think we were right. That was a movie of the moment. Fahrenheit 9/11 may not play the same way now as it did then, but back then it deserved everything it got.”
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