The World Trade Organization (WTO) is so much a part of today’s world that it economy like something that has always existed, but in fact it was founded just 30 years ago, in 1995. Four years later, in 1999, the WTO held a Ministerial Conference at the Washington State Convention and Trade Center in Seattle, and the city became the focus of demonstrations (a.k.a. the “Battle of Seattle”) against globalization, exploitation of workers in developing nations, environmental destruction, offshoring American jobs, and just about everything else attributed to the WTO, fairly or otherwise. The WTO learned their lesson, holding their subsequent Ministerial Conferences in more pliable locations like Geneva, Doha, and Adu Dhabi.
Ian Bell’s WTO/99 (11/9/2025, 8:00 pm, Chase Park Plaza Cinema, 212 Kingshighway Blvd.; the director will be attending the screening), constructed entirely of archival footage, takes you back to 1999 and four days of protests involving 40,000 people from all over the world determined to shut the conference down. The footage provides ample evidence of the overly violent response of the Seattle Police Department: among other things, they used concussion grenades, chemical weapons, and rubber bullets against largely nonviolent protestors.
For those of us old enough, it recalls the police riot at the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago. If you don’t remember that one, the 2017 militarized police response of the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Departments to peaceful protests (which taught everyone a new vocabulary word: kettling) will do just as well. Or the police response to the protests after Michael Brown’s death, or the bizarrely aggressive and incompetent ICE actions taken not only against immigrants but also anyone who tried to protest or record their actions, or any other selection from the many examples of anti-protest brutality. It’s a pattern, and while details are important, it’s also important to notice the commonalities.
The footage that composes WTO/99 comes from a variety of sources, from professionally-shot broadcast TV coverage to what are essentially home movies taken by those involved in this historic event. The uneven quality of the source material gives the documentary a handmade feel, and that feels true to the protests: there’s no central authority running things, just a lot of people who don’t feel they have to be perfect or have all the answers to protest against what they think are serious wrongs. It must have been quite a job on the part of editors Bell and Alex Megaro to make a coherent story out of such a combination of materials while including such a diversity of viewpoints, but that’s exactly what they have done: the film is arranged chronologically, with chyrons to identify the passing of time.
There’s plenty to be outraged about in WTO/99, although if you’ve been paying much attention to the response to other challenges to authority in the United States it’s a story that has played out many times before and will likely play out many more times in the future. The police have weaponry they can deploy without consequences, and are supplied with all sorts of protective gear, while the protestors have to put their bodies on the line (the city of Seattle banned protestors from having gas masks after the protests began) knowing that cops are seldom held responsible for anything that they do. The news media can report everything in passive voice or make the apparent actors into non-human entities (“protests turn violent”) to avoid being specific about who is doing what to whom, while those for whom it’s not a spectator sport can’t hide behind euphemisms and abstractions. Do forgive me but I’m having flashbacks to Gilberto Pontecorvo’s 1966 film The Battle of Algiers, which is actually sort of an encouraging precedent because, as you may recall, the French colonizers won the battle but history, and Algeria, won the war. | Sarah Boslaugh
The 34th Annual Whitaker St. Louis International Film Festival runs Nov. 6-16, 2025 at various locations around St. Louis. Single film tickets are $15 for general admission, $12 for Cinema St. Louis members and students with valid current photo IDs. Multi-film and all-access passes are also available. Further information is available from the Cinema St. Louis web site.
