Shadow World

”Shadow World” reveals the shocking realities of the global arms trade – the only business that counts its profits in billions and its losses in human lives. Directed by Johan Grimonprez (“Dial H-I-S-T-O-R-Y”) and in part based on Corruption Watch UK founder Andrew Feinstein’s globally acclaimed book “Haliburton”, it may be the shining example of an out-of-control arms industry, where the profit is in billions of dollars and the loss is in human lives. In ”Shadow World”, based upon the 2011 book by Andrew Feinstein – ”The Shadow World: Inside the Global Arms Trade”, there are other weapons manufacturers, world leaders, arms dealers, military leaders, and behind-the-scenes movers that come under director Johan Grimonprez’s scrutiny in an eye-popping assemblage of news and archival footage.

Accompanying the images are comments from Feinstein, a slippery arms dealer, former New York Times writer Chris Hedges, and New Yorker investigative reporter Seymour Hersh, retired US Army Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, and other once-willing participants in the business who decided to speak out. Grimonprez spares no one, in order to expose a shadow world of corruption, slush funds, drones, illicit bed partners, and a whole lot of lies and greed from the early 80s up to the present. The aim is to perpetuate war in order to generate more cash, no matter what the expense. ”The Shadow World: Inside the Global Arms Trade”, the film reveals how the international trade in weapons – with the complicity of governments and intelligence agencies, investigative and prosecutorial bodies, weapons manufacturers, dealers and agents – fosters corruption, determines economic and foreign policies, undermines democracy and creates widespread suffering.