President Barack Obama’s campaign will release The Road We’ve Traveled on Thursday, a 17-minute film that highlights the administration’s successes and the president’s leadership over the past four years.
Davis Guggenheim, director of An Inconvenient Truth and Waiting for Superman, directed the short film. It tackles the killing of Osama bin Laden, universally hailed as the President’s biggest foreign policy achievement, the 2008-2009 bailouts of the American auto industry, and other key policy moves.
WATCH THE TRAILER FOR ‘THE ROAD WE’VE TRAVELED’ HERE:
[youtubevid http://youtube.com/watch?v=NXtJhLUOFXE]
The film, narrated by actor Tom Hanks, was not initiated by the campaign, according to an Obama campaign official. Guggenheim himself approached top Obama adviser David Axlerod at the start of Obama’s first term to ask if there was anything he could do to help out. The director was familiar with the campaign and it’s operation after producing the 30-minute television address the Obama campaign aired on several major stations just a week before the 2008 election.
Through Axelrod and Guggenheim’s conversations, the film was born.
Critics, such as CNN’s Piers Morgan, have criticized the film for being too biased, and say that calling it a documentary, and not simply a lengthy campaign ad, is misleading.
Guggenheim dismissed these criticisms saying, “well, I mean the negative, for me, was there were too many accomplishments.
He added, “I had 17 minutes to put them all in there.”
According to Federal Election Commission records attained by The Daily Caller, Obama for America paid just over $345,000 for the film. The Caller reports that two separate payments of between $160,000 and $180,000, were made to the campaign.
The film will on the campaign website, and will be shown at different Obama for America events on Thursday evening.