ABOUT
After an intense sting operation by the U.S. government in Thailand, the career of internationally known arms smuggler, Viktor Bout, came to a decisive end. What led up to this sensational arrest was the epic life of a man veiled by the obscurity of post-Soviet Russia; a war profiteer, aerial delivery tycoon and international arms dealer with an empire so vast he was dubbed "The Merchant of Death." In sharp contrast to this cartoon-like super-villain persona is another Bout: a philosophical family man who built his business from the ground up, traveling the world with an old-school camcorder and filming his adventures all along the way. With unprecedented access to his peculiar and salacious moments, the basis of Hollywood's Lord of War comes to life in this richly drawn portrait, the ultimate rags-to-riches-to-prison memoir.
FILMMAKERS
Tony Gerber (Director/ Producer)
Tony Gerber is the director (with Jesse Moss) of Full Battle Rattle (2008 SXSW Special Jury Prize), a look at life inside the US Army's Iraq simulation in the California desert. He is a two‐time Emmy recipient and haswritten and directed over a dozen documentaries for National Geographic, shot in some of the most remoteregions of the world. He recently produced Rachel Beth Anderson's First to Fall (Gucci/TriBeCa recipient, IDFA2013) about the broken promise of the revolution in Libya. In addition to independent works, he has directed a number of special projects including The Final Word with James Cameron and short films for the PBS TEDTalks with John Legend. Gerber has been a long‐time collaborator with visual artist Matthew Barney, in addition to artists Allora/Calzadilla and Ann Sofi Siden. In 2005, With Lynn Nottage, he founded Market Road Films, a NewYork‐based production company. Currently in development is a trans-media project about how poverty is changing the American narrative,and a documentary based on Johnny Dwyer's forthcoming “American Warlord”(Knopf 2014) about Charles Taylor's American‐born son,"Chucky." The Notorious Mr. Bout is Gerber's third film to premiere at Sundance.
Maxim Pozdorovkin (Director/ Producer)
Maxim Pozdorovkin is an award‐winning filmmaker, writer and media curatorbased in New York City. His most recent film, the documentary Pussy Riot: A Punk Prayer, was shortlisted for a 2014 Academy Award and released theatricallyaround the world. The film premiered at the 2013 Sundance Film Festival, where it won a Special Jury Award. Maxim holds a PhD from Harvard University for a dissertation on found footage filmmaking and the history of information technology. Currently on fellowship at Harvard's Society of Fellows, Maxim's first feature film, Capital, is a modern‐day city symphony about the construction of Astana, a utopian city in the center of Kazakhstan. Maxim's curatorial work includes designer Julia Ramsey's large-scale knitwear installation Pelt as well as Flicker Alley's Landmarks of Early Soviet Film box-‐set, the recipient of the 2012 National Society of FilmCritics - FilmHeritage Award. Maxim's next film, the interracial sex comedy Milk and Honey, is set to begin production in 2014.