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Still, Goldin’s stories pale in comparison to the film’s coverage of the Sackler family — a documentary format that exposes the human cost of the opioid crisis in a more emotional way than has been managed on screen before. Poitras made the decision to release Zoom footage of the hearing, in which Richard, Teresa and David Sackler were to hear from victims who lost family members to opiate addiction, including an actual recording of the 911 call made by a mother after finding her child dead from an overdose.
“For me, that was the moment you really got to see the Sacklers’ faces,” Poitras reflects. “It was essential that it was involved, and then we talked to the people who testified, and, you know, they were grateful. They’ve been trying to be heard by the public for years, but people aren’t listening, and OxyContin has been killing communities since the early 2000s – that’s famous to kill them. I mean, it’s been over two decades and the government hasn’t done anything. So, of course, these families are full of anger that the Sacklers got away with it. It says so much about the cruelty in American society.
In one of the most chilling moments in the documentary, Goldin and Empire of Pain author Patrick Radon Keefe describes being followed by private investigators as a result of their campaign against Purdue Pharma. “Mine [investigative] skills were useful in this case because we actually tracked down the person who was spying on them,” says Poitras. “We didn’t end up using the footage because it felt like the movie was going too much into the spy genre, but we ran into him at some point, which was interesting because he was actually likable.” It turns out he was subcontracted and he didn’t know he was working for Sackler… His job was just to keep an eye on somebody.” When I ask about the process of finding him, she answers with a wry smile. “You know, we had a license plate and a good research team…”
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