There is no shortage of domestic and international crises right now, and it can be difficult to fully understand everything that’s happening. In other words, don’t beat yourself up if you found yourself wondering, when Donald Trump ordered Delta Force to zip into Venezuela and capture its president, Nicolás Maduro, and his wife, Cilia Flores, on charges including narcoterrorism, conspiracy, and weapons possession: “Wait, what the hell is all this about?”

You have surely read up on the topic by now (not least thanks to Foreign Policy’s reporting and analysis), but many people need a more personal connection to fully measure the importance of a headline. This is where cinema—the “empathy machine,” as the late film critic Roger Ebert called it—can fill in the gaps.

There is no shortage of domestic and international crises right now, and it can be difficult to fully understand everything that’s happening. In other words, don’t beat yourself up if you found yourself wondering, when Donald Trump ordered Delta Force to zip into Venezuela and capture its president, Nicolás Maduro, and his wife, Cilia Flores, on charges including narcoterrorism, conspiracy, and weapons possession: “Wait, what the hell is all this about?”

You have surely read up on the topic by now (not least thanks to Foreign Policy’s reporting and analysis), but many people need a more personal connection to fully measure the importance of a headline. This is where cinema—the “empathy machine,” as the late film critic Roger Ebert called it—can fill in the gaps.

There haven’t been as many movies about modern Venezuela as about other nations undergoing great tumult. But there are enough to give you a more tactile understanding of the people, the politicians, and their struggles.

Directed by Jen Gatien and Billy Corben

Men of War, which I wrote about in great depth just four months ago, was worth watching before Trump’s actions in Venezuela, and it’s even more essential now.

The 2024 documentary details the largely forgotten Operation Gideon—also known as the Bay of Piglets incident—in 2020, when a small group of U.S. mercenaries attempted to overthrow Maduro’s government in Venezuela. The episode was treated as a mere sideshow at the time, and this stranger-than-fiction documentary portrays the coup’s mastermind, former Green Beret Jordan Goudreau, as a dimwit straight out of a Coen brothers film. There is evidence, however, suggesting that the first Trump administration was initially involved in instigating the affair.

The film dives into the weird world of private security contracts, corruption within the Venezuelan expat business community, and the long-held grudges of Venezuelan military leaders who were dismissed by Maduro. Its perspective is rather jaundiced, made all the darker and more depressing when considering the livelihoods and civil liberties at stake in the present moment. Watching the film now, at a time when Trump boasts about a (fake) Wikipedia page anointing him “acting president” of Venezuela, it is clear that this first attempt at regime change may not have been as quixotic as originally thought.

Men of War is available to rent on streaming platforms such as Amazon and Apple TV........

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