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MLK/FBI presents a sobering overview of the American intelligence community's efforts to discredit and destroy a leader of the civil rights movement. Read critic reviews

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Movie Info

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. is remembered today as an American hero: a bridge-builder, a shrewd political tactician, and a moral leader. Yet throughout his history-altering political career, he was often treated by U.S. intelligence and law enforcement agencies like an enemy of the state. In this virtuosic documentary, award-winning editor and director Sam Pollard (Editor, 4 LITTLE GIRLS, MO’ BETTER BLUES; Director/Producer, EYEZ ON THE PRIZE, SAMMY DAVIS, JR.: I’VE GOTTA BE ME) lays out a detailed account of the FBI surveillance that dogged King’s activism throughout the ’50s and ’60s, fueled by the racist and red-baiting paranoia of J. Edgar Hoover. In crafting a rich archival tapestry, featuring some revelatory restored footage of King, Pollard urges us to remember that true American progress is always hard-won.
  • Genre:
    documentary
  • Original Language:
    English
  • Director:
    Sam Pollard
  • Producer:
    Benjamin Hedin
  • Writer:
    Benjamin Hedin, Laura Tomaselli
  • Release Date (Theaters):
     limited
  • Release Date (Streaming):
  • Box Office (Gross USA):
    $44.9K
  • Runtime:
  • Production Co:
    Field of Vision

Cast & Crew

Sam Pollard
Director
Benjamin Hedin
Writer
Laura Tomaselli
Writer
Benjamin Hedin
Producer
Charlotte Cook
Executive Producer
Steven Farneth
Executive Producer
David Friend
Executive Producer
Marie Therese Guirgis
Executive Producer
Kate Hurwitz
Executive Producer
Jeffrey Lurie
Executive Producer
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News & Interviews for MLK/FBI

Indie Fresh List: One Night in Miami, MLK/FBI, and Promising Young Woman
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Critic Reviews for MLK/FBI

All Critics (114) | Top Critics (41) | Fresh (113) | Rotten (1)

  • It gives the public a full opportunity to understand who King was as a person, a man, a human being...we see his failings, but we also see how great and powerful his movement was...

    March 2, 2021 | Full Review…

    tt stern-enzi

    WXIX-TV (Cincinnati, OH)

  • An eye-opening documentary that poses hard questions and gives no easy answers, MLK/FBI is a worthy addition to the ever-timely media concerning Martin Luther King Jr.

    January 22, 2021 | Rating: 4/5 | Full Review…

    Amon Warmann

    Empire Magazine

  • I don't know that MLK/FBI reveals anything new about its subject, but it clarifies & amplifies facets of his story in a timely way. It couldn't be more relevant, as a document of history or as a cautionary tale about balancing a public & private existence

    January 22, 2021 | Full Review…

    Leonard Maltin

    leonardmaltin.com

  • What are we going to do with the material itself? It's a question whose answers remain to be seen. The accomplishment of Pollard's documentary is that it so capably and persuasively prepares us to ask it.

    January 19, 2021 | Rating: 4/5 | Full Review…

    K. Austin Collins

    Rolling Stone

  • Cleverly uses the FBI's pursuit of civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr to tell the entwined history of leftwing protest and state-sanctioned surveillance.

    January 16, 2021 | Rating: 4/5 | Full Review…

    Simran Hans

    Observer (UK)

  • I think it really shows the importance of King as a person, as a human, as opposed to the icon that we have come to think of him as.

    January 16, 2021 | Full Review…

    Claudia Puig

    FilmWeek (KPCC - NPR Los Angeles)
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