By Tara Kyle
DNAinfo Reporter/Producer
MIDTOWN — Academy Award-winning director Charles Ferguson has shifted his sights from the origins of the Iraq War to greed on Wall Street.
The director of "No End in Sight," which examined the Bush Administration's actions leading up to the war in Iraq, traces the root causes of the financial meltdown in his latest film, "Inside Job," showing Friday and Monday at the New York Film Festival.
"It's important that the American people understand what happened here," Ferguson said in an interview with DNAinfo. "I hope that people come away with an understanding…that is hasn't been fixed yet, and that it's up to us, the American people to fix it."
Ferguson said even he was taken aback by some of what he learned over the course of interviews with top economists, politicians, scholars and even a Wall Street psychotherapist, who detailed the cocaine habits of senior management level bankers.
Glenn Hubbard, dean at Columbia University's business school, is taken to task in the film for his ties to leading financial services firms. Ferguson argues that big consulting fees corrupt economic scholarship.
While the film's message is far from cheery, it features an upbeat soundtrack with songs from Peter Gabriel and Russell Ballard as well as narration from actor Matt Damon. In between interviews, the camera lingers on shots of the Manhattan skyline at dusk and dawn, and zooms down on Learjets, yachts and Long Island mansions.
"I wanted the film to look cool, but also I wanted to convey that New York is a big place, and there is a lot of money here," Ferguson said. "Certainly when we took film of the Hamptons, I wanted to convey to people where all that money was going."
The "Inside Job" will be released in theaters on Oct.8.
