''The Weather Underground'' is a 2002

documentary film A documentary film or documentary is a non-fictional film, motion-picture intended to "document reality, primarily for the purposes of instruction, education or maintaining a Recorded history, historical record". Bill Nichols (film critic), Bil ...

based on the rise and fall of the American radical organization

Weather Underground The Weather Underground was a Far-left politics, far-left militant organization first active in 1969, founded on the Ann Arbor, Michigan, Ann Arbor campus of the University of Michigan. Originally known as the Weathermen, the group was organiz ...

Summary

Using archive footage from the time as well as interviews with the Weathermen in the modern day, the film constructs a linear narrative of the organization and serves as a cautionary tale.

Reception

Critical response

''The Weather Underground'' has an approval rating of 91% on

review aggregator A review aggregator is a system that collects reviews of products and services (such as films, books, video games, software, hardware, and cars). This system stores the reviews and uses them for purposes such as supporting a website where users ...

website

Rotten Tomatoes Rotten Tomatoes is an American review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee, and Stephen Wang ...

, based on 58 reviews, and an average rating of 7.79/10. The website's critical consensus states, "Fascinating documentary about the militant Weathermen".

Metacritic Metacritic is a website that review aggregator, aggregates reviews of films, TV shows, music albums, video games and formerly, books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted arithmetic mean, weighted average). M ...

assigned the film a weighted average score of 77 out of 100, based on 23 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".

Accolades

The film, directed by

Sam Green Sam Green is an American documentary filmmaker. His most recent projects are “live documentaries” in which he narrates a film in-person while musicians perform a live soundtrack. His 2018 project ''A Thousand Thoughts'' features a live score ...

and

Bill Siegel Bill Siegel (December 24, 1962 – December 11, 2018) was an American documentary film producer and director. Documentaries directed by Siegel include Emmy Award-winning '' The Trials of Muhammad Ali'' and the Academy Award-nominated ''The Wea ...

, won the audience choice award at the

Chicago Underground Film Festival Chicago Underground Film Festival (CUFF), founded in 1993, is the longest running underground film festival in the world. It's an internationally recognized program providing a venue for documentary, experimental and avant-garde narrative film and ...

and went on to be nominated for the

Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature An academy (Attic Greek: Ἀκαδήμεια; Koine Greek Ἀκαδημία) is an institution of secondary education, secondary or tertiary education, tertiary higher education, higher learning (and generally also research or honorary membershi ...

in 2004.Documentary Short and Feature Film Oscar® Winners in 2004-Oscars on YouTube
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References

External links

''The Weather Underground''
site for ''

Independent Lens ''Independent Lens'' is a weekly television series airing on PBS featuring documentary films made by independent filmmakers. Past seasons of ''Independent Lens'' were hosted by Angela Bassett, Don Cheadle, Susan Sarandon, Edie Falco, Terrence Ho ...

'' on

PBS The Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) is an American public broadcasting, public broadcaster and Non-commercial activity, non-commercial, Terrestrial television, free-to-air television network based in Arlington, Virginia. PBS is a publicly fu ...

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''The Weather Underground''
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