Theaters of War: How the Pentagon and CIA Took Hollywood

Are Top Gun or Transformers, with all that military power, independently created, or does the American military actually get a crack in the script? Theaters of War digs deep into a vast new trove of recently released internal government documents to vividly bring the answers to these questions into sharp focus. 

Traveling across America, filmmaker and media scholar Roger Stahl engages an array of other researchers, bewildered veterans, PR insiders, and industry producers willing to talk. In unsettling and riveting detail, he discovers how the military and CIA have pushed official narratives while systematically scrubbing scripts of war crimes, corruption, racism, sexual assault, coups, assassinations, and torture. As these activities gain new public scrutiny, new questions arise: How have they managed to fly under the radar for so long? And where do we go from here?

Film selected by Jonas Staal in collaboration with Gogbot and Rijksmuseum Twente
The film is selected by artist Jonas Staal, who earlier that afternoon gives a 'propaganda lecture' and whose work is on show in the exhibition 'Democracy Now?' at Rijksmuseum Twenthe.

GOGBOT 2026: Manufactured Minds
This screening is in collaboration with the Gogbot Festival, themed “Manufactured Minds.” Click here for more about Gogbot 2026 and here for the complete film program during the festival. 

The entire festival is free to attend, including the films. However, it is necessary to obtain a free ticket for the films at one of the Concordia box offices on the day of the screening.