Lake of Fire

Release Date: Available now
Director/Writer/Cinematographer: Tony Kaye
Studio/Run Time: THINKFilm, 152 mins.

Can a film about abortion be truly objective? Probably not, but American History X director Tony Kaye’s Lake of Fire attempts to distance any personal feelings about the topic in favor of simply watching and listening to both sides of the issue. Shot over a 16-year period, the project nearly bankrupted Kaye in his dogmatic pursuit to understand our changing views on abortion and what it is that makes the pro-choice and pro-life stances so completely irreconcilable. Lake of Fire features captivating interviews, from an ex-KKK member encouraging the murder of an abortion-performing doctor to Noam Chomsky and Alan Dershowitz’s cold assessments of the political situation in America. But the film’s real power comes from its visuals, specifically the unflinching footage of actual abortion procedures. Genuinely di≈cult to watch at times, Lake’s head-on confrontation of a problem most people simply wish to ignore is documentary cinema at its most raw and vital.