89 minutes / Color
Closed Captioned
Release: 2025
Copyright: 2024
In this prescient documentary, produced in the lead-up to the 2024 U.S. presidential election, Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial cartoonist Ann Telnaes (The Washington Post) offers sharp, witty political commentary on American political hypocrisy. Alongside Telnaes, leading political analysts — including Heather Cox Richardson, Steven Levitsky, Melissa Murray, Eli Mystal, and Gowri Ramachandran — lay bare the complex history and mounting challenges facing the world's most influential democracy.
Oscar-nominated director Laura Nix (INVENTING TOMORROW, THE YES MEN ARE REVOLTING) turns her insightful lens on one of the most consequential moments in American democracy's nearly 250-year history. Connecting today's political crises to their historical roots, the film examines executive overreach, a crisis in judicial ethics, and a media environment saturated with disinformation, as the nation grapples with structural challenges that extend far beyond any single presidency.
With dark humor and incisive insight, DEMOCRACY UNDER SIEGE explores how the promise of American multiracial democracy faces a renewed backlash, culminating in growing fears of authoritarianism. In the wake of the 2024 election, the film remains both a timely warning and an invitation to reflection and dialogue, asking a vital question: Can the United States preserve its democratic ideals amid deep polarization and the rise of political extremism?
“For all the chaos that Telnaes confronts in her editorials, and Nix in turn conveys through the passionate interviewees, the film lets the circumstances that enabled both elections serve as a cautionary rallying cry to mobilize audiences as the next elections near.” - Pat Mullen, POV Magazine
“With DEMOCRACY UNDER SIEGE, writer-director Laura Nix has done a great job and performed a public service with her sweeping film, which details the rise — and return — of Trump but, more importantly, traces the political machinery back to its roots.” - Josef Woodard, The Independent
“DEMOCRACY UNDER SIEGE feels like someone standing on the beach as the tide is going out, yelling to everyone, ‘Get to higher ground! A Tsunami is coming!’ while they remain nonchalantly reclined in their beach chairs, sipping piña coladas, muttering, ‘Relax, you’re over-reacting!’” - Jason Chatfield, Vancouver International Film Festival
“Nix has made a bombshell film that is the equivalent of smelling salts under the noses of an engaged global citizenry” - DOC NYC
“The documentary exposes the complex history and challenges of the world's most influential political system at one of the most extreme and decisive moments in American democracy's nearly 250-year history.” - Mostra Internacional de Cinema de São Paulo
“A captivating documentary that uses the sharp wit and insightful art of Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist Ann Telnaes to explore the challenges facing US democracy in the lead-up to the 2024 US presidential election.” - Santa Barbara Film Festival
“Along with other top political commentators, Telnaes lays bare the complicated history of the world’s most influential political system, providing a clear and concise overview of America’s alarming shift to the right under Trump.” = Salt Spring Film Festival
Coming soon.
A MARC record for this title is not available yet.
Selected Accolades
