The Final Year

The documentary follows the final year of the Obama administration from the foreign policy side. The camera travels with Secretary of State John Kerry, UN ambassador Samantha Power and deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes. The team is handling the Paris climate agreement, the Iran negotiations, the opening to Cuba and the question of Syria, all of it dependent on the next administration continuing it. Greg Barker directs. The access is wide. The crew is with them for a year on aircraft, in meeting rooms and on the road; access at that scale is rare. What interests the film is timing rather than policy. Everyone knows a clock is running out and every diplomatic move is made against that date; the narrative is built as a race. The camera was with the team on election night in 2016, and that passage changes the tone entirely; the documentary begins as a compilation of achievements and arrives somewhere else. The Samantha Power strand is the most concrete; travelling as both an official and a mother, and one scene in Nigeria, is the most discussed part of the film. Its limit is the absence of distance. The narrative proceeds from the team's point of view and there is almost no criticism of the decisions; the policy on Syria in particular goes unquestioned. Who it is for: viewers who like documentaries on diplomacy and American politics. Who it is not for: it takes a side, there are too many names without the background, and the narrative can read as a defence.