NZ International Fraud Film Festival

A VICELAND documentary series in which reporter Ben Makuch travels the world to meet with hackers, government officials, and dissidents to investigate the ecosystem of cyberwarfare. Two episodes will be shown.

The Sony Hack: Sony Pictures was hacked and the U.S. blamed North Korea. But the government’s evidence wasn’t all that convincing, and many hackers and computer experts still have doubts.

The Ashley Madison Hack: After Ashley Madison, a hook-up site for married people, got hacked, its users weren’t the only ones exposed – turns out the cheating site may have been cheating its own customers.

The feature-length documentary follows the prosecution of a small New York neighbourhood bank which serves the local Chinese community. Abacus alerted the authorities to the fraudulent behaviour of an employee but then found itself subject to the first US federal bank prosecution since 1991.

This captivating documentary from the director of Hoop Dreams suggests the bank was targeted because it was small enough to prosecute, compared to those responsible for the sub-prime mortgage collapse in 2007-08.

Director Steve James will find out on March 5, NZ time, if his film has won the Academy Award.

The film will be followed by a half-hour panel discussion featuring industry experts and business journalists.

A billionaire investor is an unlikely heroic champion of the people in Betting on Zero. The documentary shows how hedge fund titan Bill Ackman used the resources at his disposal to take on nutritional supplements purveyor Herbalife, a publicly traded company that Ackman accused of being a pyramid scheme.

Aiming for a victory in both moral and monetary senses by shorting stock in the company, betting it would collapse under regulatory scrutiny, Ackman attracts the ire of a rival activist investor. Carl Icahn (who uncoincidentally was an existing adversary of Ackman’s) enters the fray to thwart his plan. As the pair wage a battle over Herbalife’s stock price, Betting on Zero highlights the power of ethical investment and fraud on the broadest corporate scale.

The film will be followed by a half-hour panel discussion featuring industry experts and business journalists.

In 2009, Oscar-winning documentary-maker Alex Gibney (Taxi to the Dark Side; Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room; Going Clear) set out to make a film about Lance Armstrong’s comeback from retirement. But the wheels fell off what Gibney had thought would be a wholesome tale of redemption, and he shelved the film when doping allegations surfaced – dust that would never settle.

As Armstrong’s doping, bullying and lying became evident, Gibney sat down with Armstrong just three hours after his infamous Oprah Winfrey confession to probe the disgraced athlete’s motivations and self-justifications, and put the psychology of deceit under the microscope. The remarkable result, The Armstrong Lie, depicts the seeming unrepentance of a highly competitive man, whose ability to con the planet seemingly provided similar thrills to being world champion.

At the conclusion of the film, a former team mate of Lance Armstrong’s - Kiwi Tour de France cyclist Stephen Swart will take part in a Q&A on stage, talking about how he helped expose Lance Armstrong and impact it had on him.

Rated M - offensive language