SXSW First Look: Director Ondi Timoner Digs Into GameStop Fiasco & The Internet’s Threat To Democracy In ‘The New Americans: Gaming A Revolution’ 

Oscar-shortlisted director Ondi Timoner was among the first documentary filmmakers to seriously examine the significance of the internet age, in her 2009 film We Live in Public.

The GameStop fiasco of 2021, in which day traders sent the stock market reeling by short-selling shares in the video game retailer, plays an integral role in the documentary.

“The New Americans takes us on a wild meme-driven ride to meet the founders of Reddit and WallStreetBets, crypto fanatics, bored housewives, and TikTok-ers turned millionaire traders, in order to investigate the never-before-made connection between the GameStop squeeze and the Jan 6th Insurrection,” according to a description of the film. “Disruptive tropes can help a disenfranchised generation to rise up against corrupt power structures. But will algorithms amplify our worst impulses, threatening the very pillars of our democracy? The New Americans is a mem-ified punk rock manifesto that takes us inside the ‘revolution game’ to look at where we came from and where we’re headed on the precipice of this new era.”