When a City Tried to Warn the World

Read Time:5 Minute, 21 Second

MOVIE REVIEW
WTO/99
–

Genre: Documentary, History, Politics
Year Released: 2025
Runtime: 1h 42m
Director(s): Ian Bell
Where to Watch: NY Premiere at DOC NYC, November 14, 2025

RAVING REVIEW: WTO/99 is a reminder of a moment when the ground beneath a nation shifted, and tens of thousands of everyday people believed they could push back hard enough to make the world listen. It tells the story of the 1999 Seattle protests not by explaining what happened but by immersing you directly into the chaos, emotion, and urgency of those four days. Through nothing but archival footage and a meticulously assembled structure, the documentary pulls viewers into a fight that many dismissed at the time as fringe anger — but now feels unsettlingly prophetic.

Rather than relying on retrospective commentary, WTO/99 allows history to speak for itself. The chants, the gas masks, the broken windows, the fear, the hope, the disbelief — they all unfold in real time. The film doesn’t soften edges, and that absence of modern narration becomes a powerful choice. We aren’t being told what to think. We’re being dropped right into the middle of a downtown that transformed overnight into a battleground for global identity: Who benefits from globalization, and who pays the price? Can we make a change again…

The film reconstructs the week chronologically, and that clarity becomes one of its sharpest storytelling tools. Early scenes focus on coalition building, as environmental activists march alongside steelworkers, religious communities join forces with anarchists, and human rights groups chant alongside union leaders. It’s a rare visual record of unity built on shared stakes rather than shared ideology. The film creates a portrait of a movement that believed the world could be better — not abstractly, but because they’d studied the costs of capitalism unrestrained. That sense of a collective calling gives the film emotional lift before the escalation crashes down. The film defines solidarity in the most visible way possible!

As the protests intensify, so does the response from law enforcement. WTO/99 refuses to look away as police shift into a militarized posture that feels alarmingly familiar in hindsight. Tear gas blankets whole blocks. Rubber bullets fly into crowds of teenagers, nurses, and teachers who had come prepared to make noise, not take the fallout from wannabe enforcers. The tension grows suffocating as the film depicts a city government losing control and attempting to regain it with force. The contrast — peaceful marches in one frame, panic a street away — exposes how rapidly a movement can be recast as a threat when its impact becomes too visible.

One of the film’s most striking accomplishments is how clearly it conveys the message that brought these people together. WTO/99 highlights the outrage over trade policies that prioritize corporate expansion while eroding environmental protections, undermining labor rights, and exacerbating global inequality. It demonstrates that the warning signs were present long before headlines caught up. Those crowds weren’t predicting a far-off future; they were naming a crisis already in motion. Watching now, nearly three decades later, you realize how many of their fears became reality — precarious workforces, climate effects no longer theoretical, and economic power consolidated into fewer and fewer hands.

WTO/99 is thrilling without glamorizing. Grainy footage and jittery handheld cameras enhance the urgency rather than fighting against it. The edit flows like a lived experience — disorienting when panic takes hold, calmer when solidarity fills the streets. The choice to balance perspectives is essential: police body-cam footage sits beside home-video protest recordings and broadcast clips. This creates a sweeping sense of totality that few archival documentaries achieve. It feels like the city itself is the narrator, conflicted and loud.

At a human level, the film understands protest as communal action, not individual heroism. There are no spotlighted stars of the movement. No grand speeches shaping the narrative. Instead, small moments define the experience: volunteers rushing water and snacks to strangers, people linking arms to protect others from police charges, musicians turning fear into rhythm. It reclaims activism from the idea of spectacle and roots it in care, courage, and necessary disruption.

While the film excels as a historical record, it also refuses to remain confined to the past tense. The atmosphere it captures — the rage, the exhaustion, the determination — feels tied directly to recent protest movements across the United States. The film doesn’t need to draw those parallels; they’re visible in every gasp of tear-gas-filled air. That resonance gives the film its emotional sting and intellectual depth. It’s not nostalgia. It’s a haunting reminder of unrealized momentum.

WTO/99 succeeds because it knows exactly what it is: evidence. Evidence of collective power. Evidence of state response. Evidence of what happens when people refuse to be silent, and institutions refuse to be challenged. It is a cinematic record of a week when America was forced to make visible the cost of its global ambitions. The film honors the protesters not by romanticizing them, but by preserving the truth that they were right to fight — and right to fear where the world was heading.

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[photo courtesy of FOGHORN FEATURES]

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