After an intense sting operation by the U.S. government in Thailand, the career of internationally known arms smuggler, Viktor Bout, came to a decisive end. What led up to this sensational arrest was the epic life of a man veiled by the obscurity of post-Soviet Russia; a war profiteer, aerial delivery tycoon and international arms dealer with an empire so vast he was dubbed “The Merchant of Death.” In sharp contrast to this cartoon-like super-villain persona is another Bout: a philosophical family man who built his business from the ground up, traveling the world with an old-school camcorder and filming his adventures all along the way. With unprecedented access to his peculiar and salacious moments, the basis of Hollywood's Lord of War comes to life in this richly drawn portrait, the ultimate rags-to-riches-to-prison memoir.

Tony Gerber and Maxim Pozdorovkin's THE NOTORIOUS MR. BOUT premiered at the Sundance Film Festival, where it was nominated for the World Cinema Documentary Grand Jury Prize and hailed as a “very entertaining documentary” about a “man whose guilt in enabling war crimes is crystal-clear to everyone save himself” (Variety).

DIRECTED BY TONY GERBER & MAXIM POZDOROVKIN
RUSSIA, UNITED STATES | 2014 | ENGLISH & RUSSIAN WITH ENGLISH SUBTITLES