Mirage Men is a 2013

documentary film A documentary film or documentary is a non-fictional motion-picture intended to "document reality, primarily for the purposes of instruction, education or maintaining a historical record". Bill Nichols has characterized the documentary in te ...

directed by

John Lundberg John Lundberg (born 5 December 1968) is an English artist and documentary filmmaker. His work is concerned with ostension. Underpinning all of his work is an interest in how myth and artifice can shape and alter reality, especially regarding ...

, written by Mark Pilkington and co-directed by Roland Denning and Kypros Kyprianou. ''Mirage Men'' suggests there was conspiracy by the U.S. military to fabricate

UFO An unidentified flying object (UFO), more recently renamed by US officials as a UAP (unidentified aerial phenomenon), is any perceived aerial phenomenon that cannot be immediately identified or explained. On investigation, most UFOs are id ...

folklore in order to deflect attention from classified aerospace projects. It prominently features Richard Doty (born October 11, 1944), a retired Special Agent who worked for

AFOSI The Department of the Air Force Office of Special Investigations (OSI) is a U.S. federal law enforcement agency that reports directly to the Secretary of the Air Force. OSI is also a U.S. Air Force field operating agency under the administrative ...

, the

United States Air Force The United States Air Force (USAF) is the Aerial warfare, air military branch, service branch of the United States Armed Forces, and is one of the eight uniformed services of the United States. Originally created on 1 August 1907, as a part ...

Office of Special Investigation. The film had its world premiere at the 2013

Sheffield Doc/Fest Sheffield DocFest (formerly styled Sheffield Doc/Fest), short for Sheffield International Documentary Festival (SIDF), is an international documentary festival and Marketplace held annually in Sheffield, England. The Festival includes film sc ...

in the UK on 13 June 2013, its North American premiere at the 2013

Fantastic Fest Fantastic Fest is an annual film festival in Austin, Texas. It was founded in 2005 by Tim League of Alamo Drafthouse, Harry Knowles of Ain't It Cool News, Paul Alvarado-Dykstra, and Tim McCanlies, writer of ''The Iron Giant'' and ''Secondhand ...

in Austin, Texas on 22 September 2013, its Australian premiere at the

Canberra International Film Festival The Canberra International Film Festival (CIFF) is an annual film festival held in Canberra, Australia. It is a cinema celebration across an 11-day program in October/November each year. It is a showcase of films from Australia and around the gl ...

on 31 October 2013 and its Nordic premiere at the

Stockholm Film Festival The Stockholm International Film Festival ( sv, Stockholms filmfestival, italic=no) is an annual film festival held in Stockholm, Sweden. It was launched in 1990 and has been held every year since then during the second half of November. The w ...

in Sweden on 10 November 2013. Mark Pilkington's book about the project, also called ''Mirage Men'', was published in 2010 by

Constable & Robinson Constable & Robinson Ltd. is an imprint of Little, Brown which publishes fiction and non-fiction books and ebooks. Founded in Edinburgh in 1795 by Archibald Constable as Constable & Co., and by Nick Robinson as Robinson Publishing Ltd in 1983 ...

Reception

Critical reception for the documentary has been positive.

Twitch Film Screen Anarchy, previously known as Twitch Film or Twitch, is a Canadian English-language website featuring news and reviews of mainly international, independent and cult films. The website was founded in 2004 by Todd Brown. In addition to films, ...

said the film was "Scary, unsettling" and "offered profound food for thought". Electric Sheep magazine called it "one of the must see documentaries of the year".

Ain't it Cool News Ain't It Cool News (AICN) is an entertainment news website founded by Harry Knowles and run by his sister Dannie Knowles since September 2017, dedicated to news, rumors, and reviews of upcoming and current films, television, and comic book pro ...

called the film "a real head trip" and said they were "glued to heirseat".

Influence

''Mirage Men'' has been excerpted in the

Adam Curtis Adam Curtis (born 26 May 1955) is an English documentary filmmaker. Curtis began his career as a conventional documentary producer for the BBC throughout the 1980s and into the early 1990s. The release of ''Pandora's Box'' (1992) marked the ...

documentary '' HyperNormalisation'' on BBC iPlayer. American novelist

Ernest Cline Ernest Christy Cline (born March 29, 1972) is an American science fiction novelist, slam poet, and screenwriter. He wrote the novels '' Ready Player One'', '' Armada'', and '' Ready Player Two'' and co-wrote the screenplay for the film adaptation ...

credits the ''Mirage Men'' film as an influence on his novel and screenplay '' Armada'' in which the government has known for decades of an alien invasion and has been funding sci-fi films and videogames in order to prepare people for war.

References

External links

* * {{IMDb title, 2254010, Mirage Men 2013 films Documentary films about the United States British documentary films Documentary films about conspiracy theories 2013 documentary films UFO hoaxes 2010s English-language films 2010s British films