Taxi to the Dark Side

An Afghan taxi driver named Dilawar is detained at Bagram in 2002 and dies five days later. The autopsy shows his legs pulped from beating. It later emerges that he had no involvement in any crime. Alex Gibney starts the documentary from that single case and works upward: who authorised the interrogation techniques, the opinions written by legal counsel, and how the young soldiers at the bottom of the chain were prosecuted. Among those speaking are soldiers who were there. The film proceeds on documents rather than anger and sets out to show that torture was not a deviation but a policy. It won the Oscar for best documentary. Who it is for: viewers who follow political documentary and the legal argument after the war. Who it is not for: anyone avoiding descriptions of torture.