The House I live In - directed by Eugene Jarecki
Winner of the best documentary prize at Sundance, the latest film by Eugene Jarecki (THE TRIALS OF HENRY KISSINGER, WHY WE FIGHT) ranks with THE THIN BLUE LINE, BOWLING FOR COLUMBINE, and INSIDE JOB as a great documentary polemic. The subject is the “War on Drugs,” which, as this eye-opening film persuasively shows, is more precisely a war on those who are perceived as class and racial outsiders—dating back to the 19th century (when opium was used to demonize Chinese immigrants), officially inaugurated by Richard Nixon, escalated by Ronald Reagan, and espoused by virtually every major Presidential candidate ever since. Using eloquent analysts (including “The Wire” creator David Simon and historian Richard Lawrence Miller), compelling personal stories from all sides and levels of the “war,” and his own experience as a child of Holocaust survivors, Jarecki lucidly and passionately builds an in-depth case against a policy that demonstrably doesn’t work, has a ruinous effect on American society, but remains entrenched thanks to its profitability and political expediency.
