Crude (2009 film)
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Film still
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| Directed by | Joe Berlinger |
| Produced by | Joe Berlinger Michael Bonfiglio J.R. DeLeon Richard Stratton |
| Music by | Wendy Blackstone |
| Cinematography | Pocho Alvarez Joe Berlinger Michael Bonfiglio Juan Diego Pérez |
| Edited by | Alyse Ardell Spiegel |
| Distributed by | Entendre Films Radical Media Red Envelope Entertainment Third Eye Motion Picture First Run Features |
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Release date
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Running time
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100 minutes |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
Crude is a 2009 American documentary film directed and produced by Joe Berlinger. It follows a two-year portion of an ongoing class action lawsuit against the Chevron Corporation in Ecuador.
The film follows the progress during 2006 and 2007 of a $27 billion legal case brought against the Chevron Corporation following the drilling of the Lago Agrio oil field, a case described by activists as an “Amazon Chernobyl”.
The plaintiffs of the class action lawsuit are 30,000 Ecuadorians living in the Amazonian rainforest who claim their ancestral homeland has been polluted by the oil industry. In addition to the legal struggle, Crude shows interviews from representatives of the plaintiffs and defendants of the class action lawsuit, and explores the influence of media support such as Vanity Fair, celebrity activism including support from musical artist Sting and his wife Trudie Styler, the power of multinational corporations, the shifting power in Ecuadorian politics, and rapidly disappearing indigenous cultures explored in the movie.
The film ends with a prediction the lawsuit will not be resolved for another decade or so unless an out of court settlement is arranged.
Chevron noted that a scene in the film Crude presented at the Sundance Film Festival, showed an environmental scientist present at a legal strategy meeting of plaintiffs’ lawyers; that same scientist was later appointed by the Ecuadorian court as an ostensibly impartial expert to write a report on technical issues. However, the scene was cut from the theatrical release; Chevron lawyers wanted to know what other potentially compromising scenes were left out by Berlinger. On May 6, 2010 federal judge Lewis Kaplan sided with a petition submitted by Chevron and ruled that Berlinger turn over more than 600 hours of original footage created during the film's production. Chevron had sought to subpoena the footage as part of the ongoing lawsuit discussed in the film. Berlinger's legal team has maintained that the footage is protected by reporters' privilege and appealed the court's decision.
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