Sandra Bullock, as an American political strategist, plots the defeat of Evo Morales in Bolivia`s 2002 presidential ballot in “Our Brand is Crisis,” which premiered at the Toronto film festival Saturday.
The fictionalized account of the election is based on a 2005 documentary of the same name about how US Democratic Party strategist James Carville helped Morales`s opponent Gonzalo Sanches de Lozada come from behind to beat the frontrunner in the campaign.
In real life, Morales picked himself up and returned a few years later to become Bolivia`s first indigenous president, for three terms.
Bullock, who was back in Toronto following last year`s blockbuster hit “Gravity,” said she asked producers George Clooney and Grant Heslov to consider changing the lead character to a woman for her, and they did.
She noted “an explosion” in the number of meaty female roles in film and television of late. “It`s good that we`re seeing that change,” she said.
On the surface, “Our Brand is Crisis” is a sharp critique of American no holds barred electoral campaigns and candidates who manipulate the truth in order to win.
More broadly it strikes at all deceitful marketing.
“We`re shedding a light on a small slice of that world, which happens to be politics, but I think it definitely represents where we are as a culture and where we need to take ownership back and start looking at things for what they are rather than what we`re being sold,” Bullock said.
Just take a peak “behind the curtain” to discover that “the man behind the curtain is doing some pretty deceptive and manipulative stuff,” she said.
