The Shock Doctrine by Mat Whitecross and Michael Winterbottom

Once upon a time not so long ago, there was an idea that markets and economies could look after themselves without the meddling interference of governments. This is the start of the decidedly grim fairytale that award-winning journalist Naomi Klein argues we’ve been sold as fact over the last half century, in this new documentary film.

Based on the book of the same name, The Shock Doctrine exposes the dark history of capitalism’s spread across the globe - a history that starkly contrasts with the bright-light rhetoric of freedom and liberty that is so often used in its defense.

Starting with the laboratories of experimental psychological shock treatment in the 1950s and the free market fundamentals of the economics department of the University of Chicago, Klein argues that these seemingly unconnected experiments and ideas went on to form a manual of how to spread free markets across the world : through shock.

Using an extensive list of case studies, footage and interviews, from Pinochet’s Chile through to the “War on Terror” and the 2007 Tsunami, The Shock Doctrine shows how wars, torture and natural disasters have provided the necessary conditions for aggressive economic shock therapies which prove extremely lucrative for the few and often devastating for the many. This is the disaster capitalism complex, and The Shock Doctrine is an essential, convincing, and indeed shocking exposé of this anti-fairytale of our time.

Felicity Clarke