Manufacturing Ignorance

Nov 23, 2020

1h 37m

★ 7.6

Overview

Tobacco, climate change, pesticides,... Never has scientific knowledge seemed so vast, detailed and shared. And yet it appears to be increasingly challenged. It is no longer surprising to see private corporations put strategies in place to confuse the public debate and paralyze political decision-making. Overwhelmed by excess of information, how can we, as citizens, sort out fact from fiction? One by one, this film dismantles the workings of this clever manoeuvre that aims to turn science against itself. Thanks to declassified archives, graphic animations and testimonies from experts, lobbyists and politicians, this investigation plunges us into the science of doubt. Along with a team of experts (philosophers, economists, cognitive scientists, political men, or even agnotologists), we explore concrete examples of doubt making and try to understand the whole process and the issues behind it.

Genres

Documentary

TV Movie

Production Companies

ZED

ARTE

France Télévisions

RTS

AMC Networks International Iberia

RTBF

Télé-Québec

Manufacturing Ignorance Trailers

Cast

Narrator (voice)

Pascal Vasselin

Herself

Fani Hatjina

Himself

Matthias Groß

Herself

Linsey McGoey

Herself

Naomi Oreskes

Himself

Stéphane Foucart

Herself (archive footage)

Catherine Collinet

Himself

Stanton A. Glantz

Himself

Yves Gingras

Himself

Stephan Lewandowsky

Himself

Marcel Goldberg

Himself

Carlos Sonnenschein

A BBC News investigation has revealed how violent criminal gangs are finding, abusing and extorting people from the LGBT community they meet online in Egypt. Using masking technology to hide the identities of the people he meets, Ahmed Shihab-Eldin navigates the complex online and real-life world of people who identify as queer and who have been repeatedly targeted by a gang with violent viral video humiliations and police arrests.

8.0

Le burger, un super pouvoir américain

Aug 31, 2025

No overview available.

0.0

The Forgotten Pacific

Invalid Date

'The Forgotten Pacific' travels to five Pacific islands to discover how communities are weaving indigenous knowledge into the modern-day fight to adapt, rebuild and save their islands from climate change🌏

8.5

L'adieu à la viande : la grande histoire des végétariens

Nov 22, 2025

No overview available.

9.0

The Next Right Thing

Invalid Date

Four peoples’ lives are brought together by the opioid crisis in a small Georgia city. A seasoned firefighter saves the life of a young woman looking for purpose, while grieving parents fight to provide the support their son struggled to find.

8.0

On n'est pas des racailles

Nov 23, 2025

No overview available.

0.0

The Shed at Dulwich

Invalid Date

The Shed at Dulwich was the number one rated restaurant in London, with foodies, celebrities and bloggers trying to get a table. The main obstacle for them, however, was that it didn't exist. Over the course of 8 months VICE's Oobah Butler used an assault of fake reviews to get his 'restaurant' to the hallowed top spot on TripAdvisor. With his phone perpetually ringing, PR agencies begging to represent it and TV crews pitching shows, Oobah decided he had no choice but to open its doors for one night only. Here is Oobah's journey into a false reality that captured the world's attention.

8.5

AI and the Death of the Internet

Oct 21, 2025

The internet has been flooded with AI-generated rubbish. Automated bots are producing a flood of AI-generated content that threatens to push everything else out of our social media feeds. Will this ‘slop’ lead to the death of the internet? Or perhaps is the internet a dead space already?

0.0

The Aesthetics of Anti-Fascism

Oct 13, 2025

The Epilogue of the "Aesthetics of Fascism" series.

8.0

Natari

Jun 10, 2021

Fisherman Ayoub Sehto and his son are stranded with their family in the sinking Indus Delta, void of drinking water and fishing opportunities due to climate change, and struggle to migrate to a mainland city for a better life.

8.0

The Power of Activism

Jul 1, 2022

This film takes us on an emotional journey from sacred ground above Byron Bay to Antarctica, Indonesia to Pakistan, and is sure to light a fire under the strongest climate change denier. THE POWER OF ACTIVISM focuses on six highly spirited female activists as they are put under the microscope to ascertain the financial impact of their environmental solutions… and the results are astonishing. From shark conservation to indigenous practices, intensive farming to plastic pollution; all their ‘causes' fall under the umbrella of "climate change", but they should also fall under the umbrella of "saving tax payers hundreds of millions of dollars!”

6.0

Making I'm Dangerous Tonight

Jul 26, 2022

Behind the scenes footage of I'm Dangerous Tonight. Footage shot by Stan Giesea and Eric H. Lasher

7.0

Pay-Off In Pain

Aug 18, 1948

The personal and social tragedy of drug addiction with its evil accompaniment, drug traffic. Over the side of the silent liner in the darkness slips the package of smuggled narcotics, introducing us to the complex problem which involves all races and classes of man. We see many aspects of addiction - the addict preparing an injection, a group waiting tensely for their dope peddler; agents preparing and adulterating the illegal product; the police catching a pusher red-handed. International and national authorities are working from two angles - suppression of the illicit traffic; and where possible, rehabilitation of the addict.

7.6

Mafia Is Not What It Used to Be

Sep 12, 2019

Palermo, Sicily, Italy, 2017. Twenty-five years after the murders of anti-mafia judges Giovanni Falcone, on May 23, 1992, and Paolo Borsellino, on July 19, 1992; and on the occasion of the tributes held in memory of both heroes, skeptical photographer Letizia Battaglia, chronicler of their titanic combat, criticizes the opportunism of shady characters who, like businessman Ciccio Mira, profit from the commemoration of both tragedies.

7.9

The Grab

Jun 14, 2024

An investigative journalist uncovers the money, influence, and alarming rationale behind covert land grabs by some of the world’s most powerful countries.

2.3

Denial

Jun 5, 2016

Every day our changing climate pushes us closer to an environmental catastrophe, but for most the problem is easy to ignore. David Hallquist, a Vermont utility executive, has made it his mission to take on one of the largest contributors of this global crisis-our electric grid. But when his son Derek tries to tell his father's story, the film is soon derailed by a staggering family secret, one that forces Derek and David to turn their attention toward a much more personal struggle, one that can no longer be ignored. - Written by Aaron Woolf

7.5

Dinosaur!

Nov 5, 1985

An entertaining documentary look at dinosaurs with Emmy Award-winning special effects, feature film clips and stills, commentary by leading paleontologists of the time, and an on camera as well as voice-over narrative by Christopher Reeve. Shot on location in Los Angeles and New York at the American Museum of Natural History

0.0

The Cost of Cobalt

Mar 31, 2021

In the cobalt mining areas of Katanga in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), babies are being born with horrific birth defects. Scientists and doctors are finding increasing evidence of environmental pollution from industrial mining which, they believe, may be the cause of a range of malformations from cleft palate to some so serious the baby is stillborn. More than 60% of the world’s reserves of cobalt are in the DRC and this mineral is essential for the production of electric car batteries, which may be the key to reducing carbon emissions and to slowing climate change. In The Cost of Cobalt we meet the doctors treating the children affected and the scientists who are measuring the pollution. Cobalt may be part of the global solution to climate change, but is it right that Congo’s next generation pay the price with their health? Many are hoping that the more the world understands their plight, the more pressure will be put on the industry here to clean up its act.

8.8

Burzynski: Cancer Is Serious Business, Part II

Mar 1, 2013

In the compelling follow-up to the internationally award-winning documentary, "Burzynski: the Movie,", Part II explores the current status of Antineoplastons' clinical testing sanctioned by the United States Food & Drug Administration - and features a modern story of the struggling journeys of cancer patients being treated today at the Burzynski Clinic in Houston, Texas. Since the mapping of the Cancer Genome, Burzynski has pioneered an expansion of his therapy, which he calls, "Personalized Gene-Targeted Cancer Therapy", where each patient's Genomic Cancer Atlas is mapped and a treatment regimen is personally tailored for each individual patient - vs. the conveyor belt, "one-size-fits-all" approach that current oncology adheres to.

6.0

Kenedi Goes Back Home

Jan 1, 2003

The first film in what would ultimately become Zilnik’s famed Kenedi trilogy follows street hustler Kenedi Hasani and his friend as they roam the streets of Serbia seeking Kenedi’s parents. Kenedi Goes Back Home is Zilnik’s account of the Roma people who were forced to flee from the war in the Balkans to Germany in the 1990s and who, ten years later, are forced against their will to return to Serbia. Zilnik shows the immigrants' lives in relation to the prevailing ideology shaped today by the borders between rich and poor and by the often-racist selection process that determines who will be accepted into Western Europe. In presenting the dilemmas and identifying the crises these people face, he appeals for a solution.