oilfield completion services<\/a> as they are known for that purpose. A vision recognized and manifested by Mikhairl Khodorkovsky, henceforth known as \u201cCitizen K\u201d. This is a cinematic and suspenseful portrait of a billionaire oligarch\u2019s rise and fall. It includes extensive use of sometimes hilarious, sometimes scary, and sometimes mind blowing archival news footage going back over 40 years. At the height of Khodorkovsky\u2019s power he openly admits in an archival news clip to buying politicians \u201cjust like they do in America.\u201d This treasure trove of history is supported by more than 20 hours of contemporary face-to-face interviews conducted personally by Gibney with the highly charismatic Khodorkovsky, his friends and enemies. Interviews include Russian journalists, businesspeople (including other exiled oligarchs who crossed Putin) and his legal team that couldn\u2019t keep him out of a Siberian prison for over 10 years but did help keep him alive and ultimately set free.<\/p>\nOne of the great scenes in the film is an archival media clip of a student asking Putin during an obviously choreographed town hall about an experience that changed his life. With his eyes welling up in tears he says \u201cthe collapse of the Soviet Union.\u201d That powerful moment isn\u2019t fully explored in this film but is covered thoroughly in the award winning coverage of Putin by PBS\u2019s FRONTLINE, the only source of information on Putin that comes close to this epic film. Citizen K<\/em><\/strong> and any of FRONTLINE documentaries on Putin would be the perfect double feature for any of my fellow conspiracy theorists out there.<\/p>\nIf you\u2019re interested in digging deeper into today\u2019s headlines, or simply a fan of political intrigue and suspense at the highest levels of society,\u00a0Citizen K<\/em><\/strong> is the movie for you. It\u2019s the story of a Russian billionaire oligarch that came to control the oil, media and politicians of an entire country. It also describes in great detail how Putin seized control of Khodorkovsky\u2019s entire ill gotten empire and how Putin continues to ruthlessly wield it\u2019s stolen and concentrated wealth and power to this day. From the safety of his offices in London, Citizen K<\/em><\/strong> predicts that Putin will fall \u201cany-day now.\u201d To his critics who have noticed that his prediction of Putin\u2019s immanent demise began many years ago, he explains that his 10 years in prison has given him a different understanding and interpretation of \u201cany day now\u201d than the rest of us. For him it means 5 to 10 years…or so. I eagerly await the sequel, which I\u2019m sure will creep even closer to our own doorstep.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Reviewed by Luther Richert. Viewed at the 2019 AFI festival. Today\u2019s headlines are filled with the words \u201cbillionaire\u201d and \u201coligarch.\u201d\u00a0If you\u2019re conspiracy minded, like me, it\u2019s not hard to believe the entire world is run by a handful of corrupt, mostly unknown, filthy rich puppet masters who\u2019s short-term self-interests control almost everything. After screening the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":247597,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[369,75,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-45720","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-afi-filmfest-2019","category-documentary","category-films"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45720","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/247597"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=45720"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45720\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":47636,"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45720\/revisions\/47636"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=45720"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=45720"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=45720"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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<\/a>Today\u2019s headlines are filled with the words \u201cbillionaire\u201d and \u201coligarch.\u201d\u00a0If you\u2019re conspiracy minded, like me, it\u2019s not hard to believe the entire world is run by a handful of corrupt, mostly unknown, filthy rich puppet masters who\u2019s short-term self-interests control almost everything. After screening the documentary\u00a0Citizen K (2019)<\/em><\/strong>\u00a0at the American Film Institute Film Festival (aka #AFIFest) not only are my paranoid beliefs even stronger, I have now seen a glimpse of the road map of how we got here.<\/p>\n