WTO/99 -- Archival Documentary Compellingly Captures Historical Hinge Point

Review by Daniel Lima

My earliest memory of learning about the 1999 World Trade Organization protests in Seattle was reading about it in an elementary school history textbook, sandwiched right at the end, with precious little context for a young mind to understand what they were actually about. Looking back now, living through the repercussions of the failed promise of this “End of History” mindset, it is startlingly clear how the protests were a prelude not only to other incidents of civil unrest and uprisings, but how prescient all the people out on the streets truly were. WTO/99 is a stirring recounting of these four days, weaving a narrative with a clear perspective without ever sacrificing fidelity to the truth.

The film is assembled almost entirely from archival footage, using real video shot by protesters and media camera crews on the ground to show every possible angle of the chaos, from peaceful yet impassioned rallies to violent police actions to people simply caught in the crossfire. Clips from broadcast news and entertainment such as Real Time with Bill Maher (if you could call that entertainment) provide the context for how the nation at large is reacting to what they are seeing, or at least the establishment narratives that were pushed at the time. ​

It would be all too easy for a project like this to focus on the breakdown of order, to admonish dangerous anarchists breaking windows and the heavy-handed police response, without ever engaging with why people were on the streets to begin with. To the immense credit of director Ian Bell, WTO/99 never loses sight of the discontent motivating the protesters. Every step of the way, the film takes time to hear from regular people (as well as prominent voices like Michael Moore and Alan Keyes) who, in spite of wildly different ideologies, are united in their concern and disdain for the looming neoliberal world order.

From college students to farmers to union organizers to Republican presidential nominees, everyone voices a fairly coherent set of grievances about globalization, as embodied by the World Trade Organization. They complain that it removes trade barriers through an opaque process that removes the average citizen from the political process; that it would inevitably lead to offshoring labor to countries with nonexistent labor laws, harming both the American middle and working class as well as those foreign workers; that it would similarly allow corporations to skirt environmental regulations meant to protect both the global ecosystem and public health. This broad cross section of society vary in how eloquently they express their discontent, but there is a clarity that undermines the line that these disaffected people are all out on the street just to create trouble.

The film wisely juxtaposes these searing yet coherent testimonials with news coverage of the protests, much of which implicitly sides with the police and the WTO. The chumminess between CNN anchors and WTO officials, the callousness of the officers who refuse to hear a word about police brutality, the lack of any TV coverage that makes the government’s use of force or the negative repercussions of these nebulous free trade agreements, all make for an infuriating contrast with the people who are attempting to make their voices heard in the face of violent suppression.

The sight of armed, masked men firing weapons into crowds of unarmed people will never cease to be horrendously sickening, even as accustomed to such footage as we seem to be becoming. Perhaps more chilling than that overt violence is the ease with which they are deployed, with government officials often saying the quiet part out loud. An aside about the police being there to defend property, or the police chief in a press conference insisting that use of force is justified even as a reporter tells him that he personally witnessed chemical agents used on seated protesters, is almost as viscerally repugnant as these acts, of which there is ample video evidence.

At the end of the film, there is a quick denouement that regales the audience with the fallout of the protests: Occupy Wall Street, the economically disaffected voters that elected Donald Trump, the brutal response to the Black Lives Matters protests. It is perhaps the film’s biggest misstep, as anyone tuning into WTO/99 can likely draw those comparisons themselves, and anyone who cannot would also likely not be able to connect the dots with how quickly. Infinitely more haunting are the interviews done with protesters after the conference ends, the pride they take in what was accomplished and their hope for the future. To anyone following the news in 2025, it’s heartbreaking to know that all their greatest fears have been validated. I wonder how they’re all doing now.

Political media often ends up being labeled as “propaganda”, implying that in attempting to create a narrative that adheres to a certain ideology, facts must necessarily be distorted to the point that such media would be cheap and dishonest. The obvious rejoinder to this is it is impossible to cover any topic with zero bias, and such an attempt would merely be reinforcing whatever the status quo of a given culture is (for instance, all the news media captured here). More valuable is a work that constructs an argument from a clear point of view that is supported by fact.

WTO/99 is a triumph of storytelling prowess. To cull what must be thousands of hours of preexisting raw footage into a concise package that captures the breadth of what had happened, while offering a perspective on these events, without resorting to a talking head explicitly explaining things to the audience, is a remarkable feat. If only mainstream media was as forthright.

WTO/99 is now in theaters.

Rating: 4/5