EXCLUSIVE: Oscar-shortlisted director Ondi Timoner was among the first documentary filmmakers to seriously examine the significance of the internet age, in her 2009 film We Live in Public.
In her latest film, The New Americans: Gaming a Revolution, premiering in the Documentary Spotlight section at the SXSW Film Festival, Timoner takes a new look at the impact of the internet and social media on not only our economy and markets but our democratic form of government itself. We have your first look at the film in the clip above, ahead of the world premiere on Monday night at the Paramount Theatre in Austin.
The GameStop fiasco of 2021, in which day traders sent the stock market reeling by short-selling shares in the video game retailer, plays an integral role in the documentary.
“The New Americans takes us on a wild meme-driven ride to meet the founders of Reddit and WallStreetBets, crypto fanatics, bored housewives, and TikTok-ers turned millionaire traders, in order to investigate the never-before-made connection between the GameStop squeeze and the Jan 6th Insurrection,” according to a description of the film. “Disruptive tropes can help a disenfranchised generation to rise up against corrupt power structures. But will algorithms amplify our worst impulses, threatening the very pillars of our democracy? The New Americans is a mem-ified punk rock manifesto that takes us inside the ‘revolution game’ to look at where we came from and where we’re headed on the precipice of this new era.”
Following the world premiere, The New Americans is set to screen twice more at SXSW, on March 14 and March 18. Timoner wrote and directed the film; she produced it along with David Turner. The executive producers are Joe Berlinger, Bahman Naraghi, Kasia Neiman, and James Packer. The editors are Timoner and Jesse Gordon. Morgan Doctor composed the score.
Timoner has twice won the top prize for documentary at the Sundance Film Festival. Her 2022 film Last Flight Home, about her father Eli Timoner’s last days, made the Oscar shortlist.
Among the experts and insiders who appear in The New Americans are Jaime Rogozinski, Jordan Belfort, Anthony Scaramucci (the former Trump administration communications director), Raoul Pal, Joby Weeks, Joel Perez, Blayne Macauley, Mitchell Hennessy, Taylor Price, and ProTheDoge.
Belfort, of course, is known for being the subject of Martin Scorsese’s The Wolf of Wall Street. He makes an appearance in the exclusive clip above.
