Enjoyed the 2020 HBO documentary? The Perfect Weapon, which offered a frightening exposition about the state of cyberwarfare today, there’s another such film debuting on the network this month that you’ll probably want to add to your watch list.
It’s a new HBO documentary from the same team behind that earlier one (which includes New York TimesDirector John Maggio and reporter David Sanger Year One: A Political Odyssey, premieres on HBO Max and HBO Max October 19, 2009, and it will take viewers inside the Biden White House — in addition to presenting interviews with most of President Biden’s top cabinet chiefs like Secretary of State Antony Blinken, a college friend of Sanger’s.
HBO documentary — Year One: A Political Odyssey
Will this HBO documentary change people’s perceptions one way or the other about the 46th president, especially ahead of the November midterm elections? That remains to be seen, but we’d probably learn toward assuming it’s doubtful. Year OneIn fact, he uses three of the most controversial, polarizing issues that faced the president and his staff as a lens to tell a bigger story.
“The whole film plays through the interplay of these three things: Covid, post-Jan. 6, and the international challenges,” Sanger told Politico. Additionally, Sanger said that the film ends with Biden’s first State of the Union address (from March of this year).
HBO’s official summary of the documentary adds that it “follows the President’s inner circle, taking viewers inside the White House, the State Department, the CIA, and the Pentagon, while it dives deep into America’s response to a number of unfolding historical events: The effort to immunize a nation against an ever-morphing pandemic, continued divisiveness following January 6th, the withdrawal from Afghanistan, the rise of autocratic regimes across the globe, and increasingly adversarial relations with two nuclear superpowers — Russia and China.”
Today I spoke with President Zelenskyy to underscore that the U.S. will never recognize Russia’s purported annexation of Ukrainian territory.
I reaffirmed my resolve to continue supporting Ukraine through today’s new $625million security assistance package. pic.twitter.com/0ZP2uopn4n
— President Biden (@POTUS) October 4, 2022
The HBO documentary team had access to the Biden administration in the early days. This gave them a glimpse of what it was like. “15-minute rule” during some meetings early on in Biden’s term when Covid was raging to a greater degree than it is now.
The Year OneDocumentary features interviews with Jake Sullivan, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, and Bill Burns, CIA director. The one glaring omission — no chat with POTUS.
HBO News: More: HBO Max: New Movies and Shows (October 2022).