Acclaimed filmmaker Michael Moore formally launched his new documentary film Sicko at Cannes film festival on Saturday.
The film, played to a packed-out crowd in its biggest, 2,000-seat theatre, lashes at the health system of US that apperantly leaves 50 million lives with little or no access to medical care.
The film builds an implicit criticism against US President George W. Bush, in continuation to the Sept 11, 2001 attacks and the Iraq war, all subjects of penchant for Moore, who won Cannes’ Palme d’Or in 2004 for Fahrenheit 9/11.
This time, the filmmaker has incorporated a stunt in Sicko in which he takes a group of ailing Sept 11 emergency workers to Cuba, where they receive medical treatment.
The US government has begun a probe into this trip to Cuba, which possibly goes against its laws restricting US citizens from visiting the communist island.
After the screening, Moore told journalists:
I don’t know why the Bush administration is taking this action... This is an administration that flaunts the law, flaunts the constitution
He appended that the government investigation instigated him to make a digital copy of the film and to cache it outside the US out of fear that authorities might seize Sicko and prevent it from being screened.
Stephen Schaefer, a US critic for the Boston Globe newspaper, hailed the new movie and predicted it might do even bigger US box office business than Fahrenheit 9/11.
While the facts Sicko lays out “make me sad as an American,” Schaefer said it was...
a very strong and very honest documentary about a health system that’s totally corrupt and that is without any care for its patients.
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