Premieres Tuesday, April 15, 2025 at 9 p.m. on KPBS TV / PBS app
"The Corridors of Power" is a riveting exploration of how American leaders have made foreign policy decisions when faced with reports of genocide, war crimes and mass atrocities after the fall of the Soviet Union, when America stood as the only global superpower.
Rare archival footage and in-depth interviews with political leaders offer insight into the workings of the White House to understand not only what happened, but why it happened. Major figures from multiple presidential administrations, including Madeline Albright, Henry Kissinger, Colin Powell, Hillary Clinton, James Baker, Paul Wolfowitz, Antony Blinken and many others, provide candid testimony about the anguishing choices they faced as to whether or not the United States should intervene.
The film delves into how these leaders set policy goals and tried — or failed — to achieve them. In Iraq, the White House maintained close ties with Saddam Hussein while he gassed and murdered tens of thousands of Kurds but decisively intervened in Bosnia and Kosovo and saved thousands. Why did the entire world stand by in 1994, as nearly one million people were murdered in Rwanda? How did the U.S. decide to intervene in Libya to remove Qaddafi but watched as Assad used chemical weapons and murdered thousands of innocent civilians in Syria? As the events of each crisis unfold, leaders explain what drove their decision-making process and how that affected the ultimate outcome of events.
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Credits: Directed by Dror Moreh and produced by Moreh, Estelle Fialon, Vanessa Ciszewski, Sol Goodman and Michael Reuter. The executive producer is Vinnie Malhotra. The film is written by Dror Moreh, Oron Adar and Stephan Krumbiegel and edited by Krumbiegel. The film is © DROR MOREH PRODUCTIONS – LES FILMS DU POISSON – KATUH STUDIO – ARTE France Cinéma – SWR – BR SWR (Suedwestdeutscher Rundfunk), BR (Bayerischer Rundfunk).
