20 Most Controversial Movies Of All Time
7. Fahrenheit 9/11
A portrait of the Bush administration by the already controversial Michael Moore was always going to be a hot button film. But when Fahrenheit 9/11 won the Palme d'Or at Cannes, and then got a release date five months before the 2004 Presidential election, its level of noise being raised over the film reached unbelievable heights. Various film critics and political pundits took turns assaulting and defending the film's timing, intention, and the validity of its arguments.
It wasn't that all the individual facts in Fahrenheit 9/11 were false; in fact, Moore published a fact sheet that he claimed proved everything in the film was true. The bigger problem was, as always, Moore's selective and occasionally deceptive editing, which took potentially legitimate facts but arranged them in such a way that questionable, or outright false, conclusion was formed.
Moore has been doing this since Roger & Me, but this time, with such charged subject matter, faced more scrutiny than ever. Though the election and the Bush administration are long gone, Fahrenheit 9/11 remains a divisive work because of Moore and his lenient filmmaking methods.