Episode II • 2020 • episode "2/10" • The Last Dance

94:05

Man on Wire is a 2008 documentary film directed by James Marsh. The film chronicles Philippe Petit's 1974 high-wire walk between the Twin Towers of New York's World Trade Center and is based on Philippe Petit's book, To Reach the Clouds, which has recently been released in paperback with the new title Man on Wire. The film is crafted like a heist film, presenting rare footage of the preparations for the event and still photographs of the walk, alongside reenactments (with Paul McGill as the young Petit) and modern-day interviews with the participants. Native New Yorkers know to expect the unexpected, but who among them could've predicted that a man would stroll between the towers of the World Trade Center? French high-wire walker Philippe Petit did just that on August 7th, 1974. Petit’s success may come as a foregone conclusion, but British filmmaker James Marsh’s pulse-pounding documentary still plays more like a thriller than a non-fiction entry--in fact, it puts most thrillers to shame. Marsh (Wisconsin Death Trip, The King) starts by looking at Petit's previous stunts. First, he took on Paris's Notre Dame Cathedral, then Sydney's Harbour Bridge before honing in on the not-yet-completed WTC. The planning took years, and the prescient Petit filmed his meetings with accomplices in France and America. Marsh smoothly integrates this material with stylized re-enactments and new interviews in which participants emerge from the shadows as if to reveal deep, dark secrets which, in a way, they do, since Petit's plan was illegal, "but not wicked or mean." The director documents every step they took to circumvent security, protocol, and physics as if re-creating a classic Jules Dassin or Jean-Pierre Melville caper. Though still photographs capture the feat rather than video, the resulting images will surely blow as many minds now as they did in the 1970s when splashed all over the media. Not only did Petit walk, he danced and even lay down on the cable strung between the skyscrapers. It competed in the World Cinema Documentary Competition at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival, where it won the Grand Jury Prize: World Cinema Documentary and the World Cinema Audience Award: Documentary. In February 2009, the film won the BAFTA for Outstanding British Film, the Independent Spirit Awards and the Academy Award for Best Documentary.

2008 • People

46:47

After 9/11, Osama goes into hiding. But US Navy Seals are on his tail. In 1997, bin Laden's al-Qaida expanded its operations in Afghanistan. With the United States as his target, he occasionally gives interviews to US networks from his base in the mountains to take his threats straight into the enemy's living room. In 1998, bin Laden followed with his infamous fatwa, in which he declared the killing of civilians and soldiers of the United States and its allies everywhere as the duty of every Muslim. Just months later, the US embassies in Tanzania and Kenya are bombed, followed by a missile attack on Bin Laden's training camp and placing him on the FBI's 10 Most Wanted List. That doesn't deter him, however: in 2000, the secret services already suspected that "something was up" when al-Qaeda activists attacked a US warship and killed 17 people. In 2001, the first plans for an attack on the twin towers were already five years old. One of bin Laden's closest associates, Abu Hafs, disagrees with the strategy and leaves al-Qaeda before the operation goes ahead. On September 11, when the only TV station authorized by the Taliban broadcast the attack, a revolt broke out among the mujahideen. When George W. Bush declared the war on terror, bin Laden withdrew to the Tora Bora mountains. He never stays in the same place and always stays out of reach of American forces. In 2005, he and his family moved into a large house in Abbottabad, Pakistan. There he lived unnoticed by the public until he was shot dead during an intelligence operation by US Navy SEALs in 2011.

S1E3 • Bin Laden: The Road to 9.11 • 2021 • People

85:31

A fight on Everest? It seemed incredible. But in 2013 news channels around the world reported an ugly brawl at 6400 m (21,000 ft) as European climbers fled a mob of angry Sherpas. In 1953, New Zealander Edmund Hillary and Sherpa Tenzing Norgay had reached the summit in a spirit of co-operation and brave optimism. Now climbers and Sherpas were trading insults - even blows. What had happened to the happy, smiling Sherpas and their dedication in getting foreigners to the top of the mountain they hold so sacred?

2015 • People

46:57

In Sicily, a murderous clan, the Corleonesi, which gave its name to Brando's character in The Godfather, blasted to the top of the mafia. While in the US, a new kind of police would expose and dismantle drug enterprises.

S1E2 • The Mafia • 2005 • People

93:36

On November 5, 2001, Dr. Andrew Bagby was murdered in a parking lot in western Pennsylvania; the prime suspect, his ex-girlfriend Dr. Shirley Turner, promptly fled the United States for St. John's, Canada, where she announced that she was pregnant with Andrew's child. She named the little boy Zachary. Filmmaker Kurt Kuenne, Andrew's oldest friend, began making a film for little Zachary as a way for him to get to know the father he'd never meet. But when Shirley Turner was released on bail in Canada and was given custody of Zachary while awaiting extradition to the U.S., the film's focus shifted to Zachary's grandparents, David & Kathleen Bagby, and their desperate efforts to win custody of the boy from the woman they knew had murdered their son. What happened next, no one ever could have foreseen…

2008 • People

46:13

After two decades, can the government finally make the charges stick? Falcon reaches an agreement with the prosecutor's office and "only" gets 20 years. In November 2018, AP News, among others, reported that Augusto Falcon was deported to the Dominican Republic after serving a 20-year sentence for money laundering. Although raised in Florida, Falcon has never held US citizenship. Magluta is ultimately sentenced to almost 200 years in prison. He is still serving his 195-year sentence in a Supermax federal lockup in Colorado. According to media reports, Falcon's younger brother is now also in prison: Gustavo "Taby" Falcon was sentenced to eleven years in prison in 2018 after being on the run for almost 26 years.

S1E6 • Cocaine Cowboys: The Kings of Miami • 2021 • People