Senate drops Zero Dark Thirty inquiry [View all]

[Eugene]

Source: The Guardian

Senate drops Zero Dark Thirty inquiry

Investigation into whether Zero Dark Thirty film-makers were
granted access to classified CIA material is closed

Ben Child
guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 26 February 2013 11.29 GMT

Just a day after Zero Dark Thirty foundered at the Oscars, taking just a single technical prize, the high-profile US senate investigation that may have helped scupper the drama's awards season has been quietly dropped.

With Kathryn Bigelow and Mark Boal having previously won best film in 2010 for The Hurt Locker, Zero Dark Thirty – about the hunt for Osama bin Laden – was one of the early frontrunners for this year's Oscars and took many of the critics' prizes that preface the bigger awards ceremonies. But then disquiet grew over the film's depiction of the CIA's alleged use of torture in the hunt for the leader of al-Qaida.

In January the US Senate intelligence committee launched an investigation into whether Bigelow and Boal were granted "inappropriate access" to classified CIA material after the committee's Democratic chair Dianne Feinstein and member John McCain, the former Republican US presidential candidate, expressed concern about Zero Dark Thirty's torture scenes. In an article on the Guardian website Naomi Wolf later compared Bigelow with the Nazi propagandist Leni Riefenstahl.

The film soon became a political football, with the film-makers furiously defending their right to include fictional elements. ...

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Read more: http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2013/feb/26/senate-zero-dark-thirty-inquiry