In 2002 Bolivia is holding presidential elections. Several candidates are vying for the country’s highest office on platforms of differing ideology, but the contest is really being waged behind the scenes, by political experts who have descended from the North. Eager to prevail with modern methods, two of the frontrunners have hired the best advisers money can buy: competing campaign consultants Pat Candy (Golden Globe winner Billy Bob Thornton) and Calamity (Golden Globe winner Sandra Bullock), old acquaintances who have become guns for hire on the world market. They will lock horns and spare no dirty trick to promote their man (and damage the opponents). What seems like a whimsical contemporary tale is actually based on the 2007 documentary of the same name by Rachel Boynton. Produced by George Clooney and Grant Heslow’s Section 8, the film is a comedy with a bittersweet aftertaste, a parable on global politics and what they have become in an age of cynical campaign maneuvering. The HFPA’s Michele Manelis talked to Sandra Bullock about it.

Luca Celada