The Report: Advance Screening and Conversation
The Report is a riveting thriller based on actual events. Idealistic staffer Daniel J. Jones (Adam Driver) is tasked by his boss Senator Dianne Feinstein (Annette Bening) to lead an investigation of the CIA’s Detention and Interrogation Program, which was created in the aftermath of 9/11. Jones’ relentless pursuit of the truth leads to explosive findings that uncover the lengths to which the nation’s top intelligence agency went to destroy evidence, subvert the law, and hide a brutal secret from the American public.
Written and directed by Scott Z. Burns, the film features outstanding performances by a powerful cast led by Adam Driver, Annette Bening, and Jon Hamm. Sarah Goldberg, Michael C. Hall, Douglas Hodge, Fajer Kaisi, Ted Levine, Jennifer Morrison, Tim Blake Nelson, Linda Powell, Matthew Rhys, T. Ryder Smith, Corey Stoll, and Maura Tierney complete the powerful ensemble that brings this essential story to life.
FOLCS hosted an advance screening of the film, followed by a conversation with director Scott Z. Burns, and the real life inspiration for the film Daniel J. Jones.
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Scott Z. Burns
Director, Writer
Scott Z. Burns is a screenwriter, director, producer and playwright. Scott began his career in advertising, working on everything from beer to cars to athletic shoes. Before leaving the industry, he was part of the team that created the ‘Got Milk?’ campaign. His work in film includes producing the Academy Award® winning documentary An Inconvenient Truth, as well as An Inconvenient Sequel and Sea of Shadows. Burns’ writing credits include The Bourne Ultimatum for Paul Greengrass, as well as The Informant!, Contagion, Side Effects and The Laundromat for director Steven Soderbergh. As a director, Burns’ credits include PU-239 starring Oscar Isaac and Paddy Considine and The Report (Amazon, November 15, 2019). Burns also directed the digital series The View From Here, a collection of documentary shorts on the terminally ill. On stage, Burns’ play The Library, which deals with a high school shooting, was produced at The Public Theater and was nominated for an Outer Critics Circle Award for best new American play.
Burns is an advisor at the Sundance Institute and a member of the Natural Resources Defense Council’s Leadership Committee. Burns attended the University of Minnesota where he graduated Summa Cum Laude with a degree in English Literature.
Daniel J. Jones
Former US Senate Investigator
Daniel J. Jones is the founder and president of Advance Democracy, Inc. (ADI), a nonpartisan, non-profit organization that conducts public interest investigations around the world. ADI is currently managing more than 25 investigations on five continents relating to election security, climate change, violent extremism, and government corruption. Daniel is also the founder of The Penn Quarter Group, a research and investigative advisory in Washington, DC.
Daniel has extensive experience leading, managing, and participating in complex multi-national investigations for the U.S. Senate and the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation, including leading deployments and fact-finding missions to more than a dozen foreign countries. As a staff member of the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, Daniel led, managed, and served as the chief investigator of several prominent inquiries, including the largest investigative review in U.S. Senate history, “The Committee Study of the Central Intelligence Agency’s Detention and Interrogation Program” (aka, “The Senate Torture Report”). Based on more than 6.3 million pages of classified documents, the investigation was described by the Los Angeles Times as the “most extensive review of U.S. intelligence-gathering tactics in generations…”
Daniel has a Master in Public Policy from the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, a Master of Arts in Teaching from Johns Hopkins University, and a Bachelor of Science from Elizabethtown College. He is a former Teach For America Corps Member, a fellow at Harvard’s Carr Center for Human Rights Policy, and a member of the Board of Advocates for Human Rights First.