McLibel

McLibel (2005)

The Postman and Gardener Who Took on McDonald's, and Won.

A deep dive into the historic 1997–2005 libel lawsuit, wherein fast-food conglomerate McDonald's sued environmental activists Helen Steel and David Morris over a critical factsheet. It became the longest trial in English legal history and a major free-speech PR disaster for the corporation.

Date of release
2005-05-20
TMDB
6.7 / 10 (24)
Runtime
1h 25m
Genres
Documentary
Director
Franny Armstrong, Ken Loach

Casting

Interesting facts

McLibel is a British documentary film directed by Franny Armstrong and Ken Loach for Spanner Films about the McLibel case. The film was first completed in 1997 as a 52-minute television version after the conclusion of the original McLibel trial. It was then extended with new footage to 85-minute feature length in 2005, after the McLibel defendants took their case to the European Court of Human Rights.

Production

The 1997 version was shown at film festivals worldwide, and sold to TV in about ten countries. The 2005 extended version was released theatrically in the UK, U.S., Australia, and other countries and sold to TV around the world, notably to BBC 2 (as part of their prestigious "Storyville Classics" season, where it achieved one million viewers at 10pm on a Sunday night) and CBC in Canada.

McLibel features courtroom reconstructions of the trial directed by well-known UK film director Ken Loach, who gave his time for free. It also features interviews with Eric Schlosser (author of the 2001 book Fast Food Nation), Morgan Spurlock (writer/director of the 2004 film Super Size Me), Keir Starmer (who provided free legal support to the McLibel defendants for many years), and Howard Lyman of Oprah/Mad Cow infamy.

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.

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