JOIN THE CONVERSATION! This important film has been added as a special pre-festival night attraction. A Q&A with the filmmaker David Holbrooke will follow the movie along with a reception. The Diplomat, filmmaker David Holbrooke’s portrait of his father, tells the story of former U.S. ambassador Richard Holbrooke, who helped broker the Dayton Peace Accords, ending the war in Bosnia in 1995.
Set to debut this fall on HBO and distributed internationally by Ro*co Films, The Diplomat features interviews with world leaders including Kofi Annan, Ashraf Ghani, Madeleine Albright, Henry Kissinger, John Kerry, Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton, and considers Holbrooke’s role in maintaining America’s position as both diplomatic entity and international power player, as well as the personal sacrifices made for the job.
In the clip below, director Holbrooke meets with The New Yorker writer George Packer to uncover more of his father’s personal documents in an extensive archive.
“The modern political vernacular considers compromise a dirty word,” said Holbrooke, in a statement shared with realscreen. “My father’s story shows both the challenges and the enormous benefits to be gained when you’re willing to go down that road.”
A special evening featuring The Diplomat – a film that gives us chilling insight into the world of high stakes diplomacy, where peace is waged and wars are ended, told thru the life and legacy of Ambassador Richard Holbrooke. Following the film will be a panel discussion and Q & A with the film’s director, David Holbrooke as well as a special reception.
THE DIPLOMAT tells the remarkable story of the life and legacy of Ambassador Richard Holbrooke, whose singular career spans fifty years of American foreign policy from Vietnam to Afghanistan. Told through the perspective of his eldest son David, the documentary takes you behind the scenes of high stakes 
diplomacy where peace is waged and wars are ended. The film will be released in 2015, the 20th anniversary of Holbrooke’s crowning achievement: the Dayton Peace Accords which ended the war in Bosnia.
About the film: Richard Holbrooke—American diplomat, UN Ambassador, Assistant Secretary of State, Peace Corps official, professor, investment banker and author—died of heart failure on December 13, 2010. At the time of his death he was President Barack Obama’s point man for Afghanistan and Pakistan, and his career as a diplomat spanned 50 years of American foreign policy. For his son, director David Holbrooke, he left behind an enigma. “As I dealt with the sudden loss I decided the only way for me to grieve was to get to know him better in death than I did in life—so I set out into his world.” These words establish the tone of The Diplomat, an amalgam of historical portrait, journalistic investigation and love letter to a parent. Holbrooke traces his father’s life and legacy through interviews with friends, family, journalists and colleagues, including Diane Sawyer (Richard Holbrooke’s former girlfriend), General Wesley Clark, President Bill Clinton and several secretaries of state, including Hillary Clinton. The documentary highlights Holbrooke’s greatest foreign policy success: the brokering of a peace agreement among the warring factions in Bosnia that led to the historic signing of the 1995 Dayton Peace Accords. The Diplomat is not only a telling and forceful reminder of the singular political achievements of a complicated man, once dubbed the diplomatic hope of a generation, but also a unique and moving story of a son’s love for—and personal coming-to-terms with—an all-too-imperfect father whose work and exceptional career achievements more often than not took precedence over his family. —Tim Sika
David Holbrooke (Director) is a filmmaker and Festival Director of Mountainfilm in Telluride, CO since 2008. His last film, Hard as Nails, aired on HBO in December 2007. Other documentaries include Freaks Like Me, Time for a New God and A Redwood Grows in Brooklyn, featuring acclaimed nature photographer James Balog. All are part of an ongoing series he created called “Original Thinkers.” Other notable projects include The Soul of Healing with Deepak Chopra and co-producing The Trials of Henry Kissinger. Before he became a filmmaker, David spent a year in the dotcom world and previously, worked extensively in television news, producing long- form pieces for “The Today Show,” CBS News and CNN. David has been a contributing editor at GQ and written for the Huffington Post. His production company, Giraffe Partners, is developing narrative features and several documentaries. He lives in Telluride, Colorado with his wife and three kids.
DIPLOMAT
Country(ies): USA
Language(s): English
Year: 2015
Running time: 104
Director(s): David Holbrooke
Producer(s): Stacey Reiss
Cinematographer(s): Adam Vardy, Bao Nguyen, Jim Hurst, Richard Dallett
Editor(s): Seth Bomse
Music: Graham Reynolds
