About the documentary

From the devastating war in Syria, to the crisis in Yemen, to continuing turmoil in Iraq, much of today’s widespread violence across the Middle East has been portrayed as part of an ancient battle between the Sunni and Shia branches of Islam. But as FRONTLINE explored in a special, two-part documentary series, the real story is far more complex and contemporary — rooted in a 40-year rivalry between Iran and Saudi Arabia that has fueled sectarian extremism for political gain, with virtually every step the U.S. has taken along the way only ratcheting up the conflict.

The takeaway

From FRONTLINE founder and executive producer-at-large David Fanning, veteran FRONTLINE correspondent and producer Martin Smith, and FRONTLINE producer Linda Hirsch, Bitter Rivals offered a dramatic and timely road map for viewers to understand the forces shaping this complex region — with exclusive, on-the-ground reporting from inside both Saudi Arabia and Iran, as well as Yemen, Iraq, Pakistan, Syria and Lebanon. “From Iraq, where Iran and its Shia militias have emerged as victors, to Yemen, where Saudi Arabia is making a stand, we’ve found that recent conflicts are not just a sectarian phenomenon, but a potent political one,” said Smith, who has been covering the Middle East for FRONTLINE for 20 years. Ultimately, our most-streamed documentary of 2018 illuminates the essential history — and profound ripple effect — of Iran and Saudi Arabia’s power struggle. Bitter Rivals draws on scores of interviews with political, religious and military leaders, militia commanders, diplomats, and policy experts, painting American television’s most comprehensive picture of a feud that has reshaped the Middle East. Bitter Rivals also traces how historical interventions by the U.S. have helped to amplify sectarian antagonism between majority-Shia Iran and majority-Sunni Saudi Arabia across the decades. In up-close detail, the documentary series also shows who’s losing in Iran and Saudi Arabia’s feud: The countless civilians caught in deadly proxy conflicts between the two rivals, which show no signs of abating. “When elephants fight, it’s the grass that suffers,” Karim Sadjadpour of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace told FRONTLINE. “And in today’s Middle East, the two elephants are Iran and Saudi Arabia. There’s been over a million casualties in the Middle East over the last decade. But they’ve been Syrian. They’ve been Yemeni. They’ve been Iraqi.  Iranian and Saudi citizens aren’t the ones that are suffering.”

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Read extended interviews with Iran’s Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif and Saudi Minister of Foreign Affairs Adel Al-Jubier (who each hold the other country responsible for exporting extremism across the region and the world), and go inside the making of Bitter Rivals — a process that took two years.

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The promise of Facebook was to create a more open and connected world. But from the company’s failure to protect millions of users’ data, to the proliferation of so-called “fake news” and disinformation in the U.S. and across the world, mounting crises have raised the question: How has Facebook’s historic success as a social network brought about real-world harm?

The takeaway

With Facebook under scrutiny, this two-hour documentary from producers James Jacoby and Anya Bourg and reporter Dana Priest offered U.S. television’s most in-depth investigation of the powerful social media platform’s impact on privacy and democracy in the U.S. and around the world. Drawing on dozens of original interviews and rare footage, the film investigated a series of warnings to Facebook as the company grew from Mark Zuckerberg’s Harvard dorm room to a global empire — finding that with a relentless focus on growth, the company failed to respond effectively to warnings from both inside and outside Facebook about everything from potential privacy violations, to fomenting division and violence across the globe. The film also describes how Facebook’s leaders developed a multi-billion dollar business model that mined its most valuable asset — the personal data of its users. “Facebook systematically went from interconnecting people to essentially having a surveillance system of their whole lives,” venture capitalist and early Facebook investor Roger McNamee told FRONTLINE. When The Facebook Dilemma aired in October, The Wall Street Journal praised it as an “aggressive, indignant, illuminating two-nighter” and said, “There’s not a lot of TV that’s genuinely ‘must see,’ but ‘The Facebook Dilemma’ qualifies.” The Los Angeles Times said the documentary “poses profound questions about corporate responsibility, the behavioral manipulation of users and what happens when a force for good is weaponized,” and The Chicago Tribune called it “an engrossing lesson in the price of a ‘like.’”

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In the most recent installment of The FRONTLINE Transparency Project, we published an interactive, digital version of The Facebook Dilemma that allows you to experience the film in a new way — and to explore extended, in-depth, on-the-record interviews with nearly 30 sources from the making of the documentary. Those sources include 13 current or former Facebook employees, all speaking on the record. What they have to say constitutes one of the most in-depth collections to date of what it’s like inside Facebook. And, our interactive enables you to click, see, save, and share scores of key quotes in their original context – and to share direct links to any quote within an extended interview by highlighting the text.

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For months, special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation — and President Donald Trump’s fury about it — have dominated the headlines. In a two-hour documentary that aired in the weeks before the midterm elections, FRONTLINE methodically traced how an investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election grew to threaten Trump’s presidency.

The takeaway

Drawing on more than 60 in-depth interviews with former heads of U.S. intelligence agencies, Trump insiders, attorneys, authors and journalists, filmmaker Michael Kirk and his team traced Trump’s unprecedented war against the special counsel, the FBI, and even his own now-former attorney general. “The special counsel, the Washington establishment and the media are joined in a political struggle of historic proportions with the president and his supporters,” Kirk said. “We have been documenting the details of that battle step by step, as it reaches a critical stage for the president and the nation.” Trump’s Showdown also offered powerful context on Trump’s relationships with Rod Rosenstein, Jeff Sessions, Michael Flynn and Michael Cohen. When it premiered in October, The Hollywood Reporter said “the documentary delivers a concise and yet exhaustive account of a real-life political drama that includes one unprecedented incident after the other,” and The Baltimore Sun said it’s “as good as long-form, non-fiction television gets.”

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As part of our FRONTLINE Transparency Project, experience a custom-built interactive version of Trump’s Showdown that allows you to explore key quotes in their original context. You can also go deep into 34 transcripts of people interviewed for the documentary.

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Harvey Weinstein was once one of the most successful producers in Hollywood. But beneath the glitz and glamour, there was a pattern of alleged sexual misconduct going back to the very start of his career. In American TV’s first post-scandal documentary on the disgraced mogul, FRONTLINE and the BBC investigated Weinstein’s spectacular downfall, efforts to silence his accusers, and Hollywood’s role.

The takeaway

The documentary shone new light on what those around Weinstein knew about his behavior, and when — drawing on insider accounts from journalists who confronted Weinstein over the years as they pursued the story, accusers including actresses Sean Young and Jessica Barth; and former executives at Miramax and The Weinstein Company. “I think looking back that I did know, and I chose to suppress it,” Paul Webster, former head of production of Miramax, said in his first television interview on Weinstein’s alleged sexual misconduct. “I think we were all enablers. I think we were we were all complicit.” The documentary traced Weinstein’s alleged predatory behavior all the way back to the start of his career, including through the story of a new accuser from Weinstein’s very first movie who spoke out for the first time. When the documentary first aired in March, The Washington Post said it “demonstrates just how far the entertainment industry has to go in reckoning with its complicity,” and Variety said it “offers not just snippets of testimony but also a sense of powerful specificity,” and serves as “both a helpful primer and a necessary addition to the #MeToo movement.”

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Explore an interactive video on the culture of complicity that helped to enable Weinstein and silence his accusers, learn about what can happen if someone breaks a non-disclosure agreement, and read about how two actresses who met while filming interviews for this documentary teamed up to fight sexual abuse in Hollywood.

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A revealing series on life inside Iran, with The New York Times’ Thomas Erdbrink — one of the last Western journalists living in the country.

The takeaway

Curiosity brought Erdbrink, a young Dutch journalist, to Iran. There, at a gathering to witness the last solar eclipse of the 20^th century, he met a young Iranian photographer, Newsha Tavakolian. They met again in 2001, fell in love and married, and have lived in Tehran ever since. Over the course of four years beginning in 2014, Erdbrink was able to get permission to travel with a crew from Dutch television around the country, meeting people and hearing stories about their lives and hopes and fears, in one of the most isolated countries in the world. “I wanted to show viewers the Iran I’ve come to know, sharing the stories of how people live their lives — both inside and just outside the system,” Erdbrink says. This four-hour miniseries from Erdbrink, Roel van Broekhoven, and David Fanning does exactly that — and explores how Iran’s leaders’ harsh rhetoric against America often differs from the beliefs of ordinary Iranians.

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Go inside an AA meeting in a country where alcohol is banned, and explore how the internet has changed Iran – from cappuccino cafes, to headscarf protests.

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FRONTLINE and ProPublica investigated the white supremacists and neo-Nazis involved in the 2017 Charlottesville Unite the Right rally — finding that one participant in the violence that weekend, Vasillios Pistolis, was an active-duty Marine, and that another, Michael Miselis, worked for a major defense contractor and held a U.S. government security clearance.

The takeaway

In addition to being one of our most-streamed documentaries of the year, Documenting Hate: Charlottesville was one of our most impactful. Following our joint reporting with ProPublica, Pistolis was court-martialed and ultimately separated from the Corps; the day after we published our reporting on Miselis, defense contractor Northrop Grumman said that he was no longer employed there. A few months later, Miselis and several other individuals identified by FRONTLINE and ProPublica as members or associates of a violent white supremacist group were arrested and charged by federal prosecutors, who cited our reporting during a news conference announcing the arrests. The August 2018 film, from correspondent A.C. Thompson, director Richard Rowley, and producer Karim Hajj, also revealed just how ill-prepared law enforcement was to handle an influx of white supremacists from across the country, some of whom had been part of a series of earlier violent confrontations in California and descended on Charlottesville specifically to fight.

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Learn about how FRONTLINE and ProPublica identified white supremacists who participated in the Charlottesville violence, help us investigate hate crimes, and stream the second film in our Documenting Hate series with ProPublica, Documenting Hate: New American Nazis — which investigated a neo-Nazi group, Atomwaffen Division, that has actively recruited inside the U.S. military.

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FRONTLINE tells the story of how President Donald Trump took control of the Republican Party — from the perspective of Republican lawmakers and insiders themselves.

The takeaway

From filmmaker Michael Kirk and his team, this April 2018 documentary examines how the president is remaking the GOP in his own image, counter-punching when criticized and publicly attacking those who defy him. “What the Republican establishment now know is Donald Trump is unequivocally the leader of the Republican Party,” former Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski told FRONTLINE. But some conservatives said the Republican Party has made a “Faustian bargain” in supporting Trump: “The Republican party has been thoroughly Trumpified, and they’re bowing the knee to him,” author Charlie Sykes said. “Now, in a Faustian bargain, remember, you often get what you want… But then you find out that the price is way more than you were expecting.” Gripping and revealing, the documentary is a window into the potential lasting impact of the Trump era on the Republican Party and the American political system as a whole.

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As part of our FRONTLINE Transparency Project, experience an interactive version of Trump’s Takeover that allows you to click to explore quotes from 16 of our key interviews in their original context.

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Filmmaker Michael Kirk and his team investigated how Vladimir Putin came to see America as an enemy, how U.S. intelligence came to believe he targeted the 2016 presidential election, and the fallout under President Obama and in the Trump administration. While the two-part film first aired back in 2017, it remained highly relevant — and streamed — throughout this year.

The takeaway

Part one of Putin’s Revenge is a portrait of what makes the Russian leader tick, and the events that shaped his belief that the U.S. has sought to undermine Russia dating back to the fall of the Soviet Union. It explores how Putin constructed his image, and how he came to see Hillary Clinton in particular as an enemy. Then, part two delves into the story of Russian involvement in the 2016 election, the reaction under presidents Obama and Trump, and the implications for the future of American democracy. “The Russians aren’t going to stop,” former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper told FRONTLINE in the film. “Their experience in our 2016 election is going to embolden them to interfere in the future, maybe more aggressively.” The Wall Street Journal called the documentary “a work of electric power,” and Yahoo TV said that it’s “an urgent and absorbing piece of filmmaking.”

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In tandem with the premiere of Putin’s Revenge, FRONTLINE went live with The Putin Files — a major effort to open up our source material by publishing 56 full-length interviews from the making of the film, all fully navigable by person, theme or highlight. The Poynter Institute called the project “an admirable move towards transparency.”

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As of February 2018, when this film aired, some 25 dead bodies had been found on Long Island since 2016, all linked to the violent gang MS-13. Numerous immigrant teens were missing. As law enforcement tried to stop the gang, FRONTLINE went inside the crackdown — and also explored how the notorious gang became a focal point in President Trump’s rhetoric on immigration.

The takeaway

Producer Marcela Gaviria found that the slew of gruesome killings led to many immigrant teens being accused of gang affiliation and unlawfully detained. The documentary also shone light on the controversial role of schools in identifying potential MS-13 members to law enforcement, and how law enforcement has increasingly partnered with Immigration and Customs Enforcement to target minors perceived as threats for detention and deportation in ways that advocates say violate their right to due process. “In this film, you’ll see the struggles of law enforcement in dealing with this very difficult situation, the struggles of immigrants who feel targeted by both MS-13 and law enforcement, and the microcosm of a community that’s stuck with a really dangerous problem,” Gaviria said.

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Watch a short video on how the U.S. fueled the rise of MS-13, and read about how cities have fought to keep youth from gang life.

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The day after Martin Luther King, Jr. was killed, an Iowa schoolteacher named Jane Elliott taught her students a lesson in discrimination they would never forget. She decided to treat children with blue eyes as superior to children with brown eyes. In this classic documentary from 1985 — the only film on this list that didn’t premiere in either 2017 or 2018 — FRONTLINE explores what those children learned about discrimination, and how the experiment went on to shape them.

The takeaway

“I watched what had been marvelous, cooperative, wonderful, thoughtful children turn into nasty, vicious, discriminating, little third-graders in a space of 15 minutes,” Elliott says in the film. “They found out how to hurt one another,” she says, but more importantly, “they found out how it feels to be hurt in that way, and they refuse to hurt one another in that way again.” Produced and directed by William Peters, A Class Divided revisits Elliott’s third-grade class some 15 years later, and finds that they remain resolute in standing up against bigotry. “I think the necessity for this exercise is a crime,” Elliott says. “I don’t want to see it used more widely, I want to see it — the necessity for it wiped out.”

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Read an extended interview with Jane Elliott from 2002, delve into the first chapter of Peters’ book on Elliott’s “blue eyes”/”brown eyes” lesson and explore a classroom guide on using A Class Divided as a teaching tool.

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