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The Game of Death: Docu Film Uses Modern Day Milgram Experiment

Basing itself on the 60’s experiment which showed how most people would give unbearable electric shocks to others when encouraged by an authority, Christophe Nick and Thomas Bornot’s documentary The Game Of Death, applies the same approach in the mock form of a TV game show. Adjectives such as amusing, compelling and disturbing come to mind.

Everyone has pretty much heard of the Milgram Experiment. As wiki describes it, this was the famous study from “Yale University psychologist Stanley Milgram, which measured the willingness of study participants to obey an authority figure who instructed them to perform acts that conflicted with their personal conscience.” If genocides still occur today, I often cite this study – where participants basically followed orders without much thought, and “zapped” the hell out of some pretty good actors. A new doc is applying the above mentioned theory and will be making the rounds at next week’s European Film Market.

Basing itself on the 60’s experiment which showed how most people would give unbearable electric shocks to others when encouraged by an authority, Christophe Nick and Thomas Bornot’s documentary The Game Of Death, applies the same approach in the mock form of a TV game show. Adjectives such as amusing, compelling and disturbing come to mind. 

Christophe Nick Thomas Bornot Game of Death

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Eric Lavallée is the founder, CEO, editor-in-chief, film journalist, and critic at IONCINEMA.com, established in 2000. A regular at Sundance, Cannes, and Venice, Eric holds a BFA in film studies from the Mel Hoppenheim School of Cinema. In 2013, he served on the narrative competition jury at the SXSW Film Festival. He was an associate producer on Mark Jackson’s "This Teacher" (2018 LA Film Festival, 2018 BFI London). In 2022, he was a New Flesh Juror for Best First Feature at the Fantasia International Film Festival. Current top films for 2023 include The Zone of Interest (Glazer), Inside the Yellow Cocoon Shell (Pham Thien An), Totem (Lila Avilés), La Chimera (Alice Rohrwacher), All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt (Raven Jackson).

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