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THE ARMSTRONG LIE

Out of Competition
Alex Gibney
123' / 2013 / United States of America
English
English and spanish subtitled

Academy Award®-winning documentarian Alex Gibney (whose Mea Maxima Culpa won Best Documentary at LFF 2012) began recording cycling superstar Lance Armstrong back in 2009, until filming was unexpectedly halted following the much publicised doping scandal. Gibney’s documentary took an unexpectedly dark and complex turn when he resumed his study of the athlete in 2013, following Armstrong’s public confessions on The Oprah Show. In this unflinching account of a sport ruled by money and power, Gibney’s unprecedented access to Armstrong, his ex-teammates and the infamous Doctor Ferrari, combined with exhilarating archive footage of cycling races, draws an intricate portrait of an extraordinarily ambitious man who would stop at nothing to win. An inspiration to many, cancer survivor Armstrong, who won the Tour de France seven times, has been adored and subsequently vilified in equal measure.

Main Festivals & Awards

BAFTA Awards - Nominee, Best Documentary, 2014 / Chicago Film Critics Association, 2013 / Venice Film Festival 2013 - Official Selection / Toronto International Film Festival 2013

Director's Biography

Alex Gibney is the director of the 2008 Oscar®-winning film Taxi to the Dark Side and the 2006 Oscar®-nominated film Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room.
Most recently, he has directed Mea Maxima Culpa: Silence in the House of God, a story of sex abuse in the Catholic church, Park Avenue: Money, Power and the American Dream which examines the stratification of wealth in America, and We Steal Secrets: The Story of WikiLeaks which he completed for Focus Features.
Gibney has directed and produced several music films including Jimi Hendrix and the Blues (Director), and Martin Scorsese Presents The Blues (Producer), an 8-film documentary series (and accompanying book and multiple CD release) on the blues, including films by Scorsese, Wim Wenders, Mike Figgis, Clint Eastwood and Antoine Fuqua.
In 2010-2011, Gibney released four films as director: My Trip to Al-Qaeda, based on the one-man play by Lawrence Wright, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Looming Tower; Client 9: The Rise and Fall of Eliot Spitzer; a segment on Sumo wrestling in the omnibus film, Freakonomics; and Magic Trip, a time travel immersion experience about the famous 1964 bus trip taken by Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters.
In 2011, Gibney also directed Catching Hell for ESPN’s 30 for 30 series.
Other credits as Director include Magnolia Pictures’ releases Casino Jack and the United States of Money and Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson.
In addition to the Oscar®, Mr. Gibney has received numerous other awards, including a Grammy, multiple Emmys, the Peabody Award, and the DuPont-Columbia Award for Broadcast Journalism.