Is Hollywood Deep-Sixing January 6? [View all]

[Nevilledog]

https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2024/05/03/january-6-documentary-00155780

A long-awaited Jan. 6 documentary from a pair of Oscar-winning filmmakers sheds dramatic light on police and others whose lives were affected by the assault on the Capitol. But its absence from the website of its own studio, and from major subscription streaming outlets, have raised questions about just how America remembers that day — and about whether entertainment titans are pulling their punches as a potential second Trump term looms.

The Sixth, by Sean Fine and Andrea Nix Fine, is officially a collaboration between the award-winning Beltway-based duo and A24, the red-hot studio behind such sensations as Civil War, The Zone of Interest and Everything Everywhere All At Once. When the film was first announced, in early 2021, it seemed like the perfect pairing of talent and bankroll: Two of the capital’s best-regarded documentarians linking up with a rising entertainment-industry power.

The resulting film may be the Jan. 6 documentary most likely to flatter Washington’s self-image — a surprisingly moving portrait of public service rather than another adjudication of political culpability. Instead of focusing on the insurrectionists, the film depicts the day through the experiences of six people (a photographer, a Hill aide, a member of Congress and three police officers) who were trying to do their jobs as the mob descended. The film received a rapturous response at a standing-room-only D.C. screening last week.

But how much of the rest of the country will see it? Three years after the insurrection, with A24 sitting atop national box-office rankings thanks to Civil War, the documentary about a real domestic clash was unmentioned on the list of A24 films on the company’s website right before its release. Though The Sixth is scheduled to go public on May 3, the film is also weirdly absent from A24’s ordinarily robust social media accounts. Late on Wednesday, after I called to ask, the listing for The Sixth suddenly appeared on the site.

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