The Shock Doctrine

The Shock Doctrine (2009) is a documentary you can watch online on iFILM, directed by Michael Winterbottom and Mat Whitecross. The film adapts Naomi Klein's book of the same name: the argument that free-market reforms tied to Milton Friedman's Chicago School were systematically pushed through during crises — coups, floods, wars — when populations had no bandwidth to object.

Winterbottom and Whitecross trace the pattern across decades: Chile after the 1973 coup, Russia through the 1990s, post-invasion Iraq, New Orleans after Katrina. Klein appears throughout as narrator and analyst; archival footage puts Friedman, Thatcher, Kissinger, and Yeltsin in the frame. The filmmakers make no claim to balance — this is advocacy journalism cut like a thriller, and it argues its case hard. Stream The Shock Doctrine online on iFILM.