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Released
2016 · FILM

State of Control

Followed, Surveilled, Hacked, Jailed, Sentenced...Are You Next?

Runtime
90 min
Documentary

Synopsis

Two American filmmakers travel undercover in China and Tibet during one of the most precarious times in the country's recent history. Their journey begins in hot-bed areas of Tibetan activism in India and Nepal, before continuing into the most closed off regions of Tibet, during the full scale media blackout that began in 2008 and continues to this day. Their goal is to meet with leading Tibetan activists who are risking their lives to peacefully protest against oppression by the Chinese government's police state in a region kept "in the dark". Traveling undercover, a dangerous cat-and-mouse game unfolds as secret police maintain 24 hour surveillance of the filmmakers. Unable to document their intended subjects, they are forced to turn the cameras on themselves as they become the targets. All their moves are followed, leading to hotel break-ins, equipment theft, and cyber-hacking and spying - ultimately putting the filmmakers' very lives in danger. Forced to flee and return to the US.

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How many hands made this film

The scale of the collaboration

Principal cast & crew: 22

These are the principals we have on file — the full crew ran to the hundreds. Every film this size was made by far more hands than any credits list ever names.

Why a floor?

This is a minimum, not a total. We only count the credits we’ve captured so far, and coverage is uneven — a blockbuster might show a few hundred names while another of the same size shows a couple dozen. The real crews all ran into the thousands. The number here only grows as full credits are enriched — so we frame it as a floor, never a headcount.

Craft leads on file

Edited by Douglas BlushShot by Christian JohnstonScored by Gunnard Doboze

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