Hot Docs

Human Terrain adeptly explores the U.S. military’s controversial new program, the Human Terrain System. The program, designed to win the hearts and minds of the Iraqi and Afghan people by making cultural awareness a key counterinsurgency strategy, embeds social scientists with combat troops. While some academic critics consider it misguided and unethical to gather intelligence and target potential enemies for the military, others support the idea of a more sensitive military occupation. The film hears from both sides, giving us rare access to war games in the Mojave Desert and training exercises at Quantico and Fort Leavenworth, and taking us into the heart of the war machine and the shadowy collaboration between American academics and the armed services. Human Terrain is a brilliant and timely positing of what happens when war becomes academic and academics go to war. - Shannon Abel