America’s Burning (2024)
Director: David Smick Run Time: 83 min. Release Year: 2024
Starring: Michael Douglas
Country: United States
Language: English
About the film:
From Executive Producers Michael Douglas and Barry Levinson, America’s Burning (2024) draws on an amazing collection of thinkers and strategists, from James Carville and Amy Chua to Ian Bremmer and Leon Panetta, as New York Times best-selling author David Smick guides the viewer on a journey to discover the reasons for today’s hate and division — and rising risk of civil war.
For 40 years, the US economy has been a paradox. It’s been an extraordinary wealth-creating machine, but only for the half of the country that owns stocks. Capitalism has, as James Carville put it, become “a racket” — the ultimate corporate insider’s club, a system centrally controlled by the well-connected few. As a result, the middle class is shrinking and the American Dream’s promise of social mobility for all who work hard is dying. A new Velvet Rope Society of brains and money has cut itself off from the rest of America. Working families feel forgotten and angry, but it doesn’t have to be this way. America has an impressive history of resilience. Narrated by Michael Douglas, the film shows why our best days could still lie ahead.
About the filmmaker:
David Smick is a global macroeconomic strategist, investor, magazine editor, author, and director of the documentary films Stars and Strife (2020) and America’s Burning (2024). In his 2017 book The Great Equalizer: How Main Street Capitalism Can Create an Economy for Everyone, Smick predicted the U.S. average working family economic anxiety that led to Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump. In 2008, he published The World Is Curved: Hidden Dangers to the Global Economy, which predicted the 2008 global financial crisis. Mr. Smick has written for the Washington Post, the New York Times, and the Wall Street Journal. He has appeared as a television commentator on CNN, Fox, CNBC, Charlie Rose, and PBS.
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