With democracies facing assault around the world from far-right demagogues and foreign meddling, Astra Taylor’s expansive and often chilling What is Democracy? could not have come at a better time. Peppered with observations from Plato, the film casts a wide net, ranging effortlessly through subjects as diverse as ancient Greece, the 1960s civil rights movements, and recent false claims about voter fraud.
The film features a diverse cast—including celebrated philosophers, trauma surgeons, factory workers, refugees, and politicians— and connects past and present, emotion and the intellect, the personal and the political, to provoke and inspire. If we want to live in democracy, we must first ask what the word even means.
“The rousing documentary What is Democracy? asks all the right questions.”
Globe & Mail
“A new film offers a multitude of answers to the question What Is Democracy?”
The New Yorker
107 minutes
