The Corporation

The Corporation (2003) is a Canadian documentary you can watch online on iFILM. Directors Mark Achbar and Jennifer Abbott trace how the business corporation, granted the legal status of a person under late-18th-century American law, grew into one of the defining forces of global politics and economics. The film runs 145 minutes.

The central argument is built on a diagnostic method: the filmmakers apply standard psychiatric criteria — callousness toward others, manipulation, disregard for social rules, inability to feel remorse — to real corporate behaviour and let the case studies do the talking. Oil companies, pharmaceutical firms, agribusiness. The interviewees range from Noam Chomsky and Michael Moore to former executives who speak with unexpected candour about what the structure incentivises.

Two and a half hours is a real commitment, but the film earns it. Dense and well-sourced, it is less a polemic than a methodical autopsy of an institution most people interact with daily without quite understanding how it reasons. Stream The Corporation online on iFILM.