Klein teams up with Cuaron for anti-globalization short

A new short film collaboration from best-selling Canadian author Naomi Klein and celebrated Mexican director Alfonso Cuaron is set to make its debut at two prestigious film festivals and online.

The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism, a six-minute short created as a companion to Klein's new book of the same name, will be released simultaneously on Friday at the Toronto International Film Festival, the Venice Film Festival and online at www.naomiklein.org.

Released this week, "the book is about how moments of severe crisis … sort of soften up a society for the imposition of what the economists call economic shock therapy," Klein told CBC Radio's Matt Galloway on Thursday.

After a crisis, it is natural for people to regress, she said.

"What I'm describing is a political process where we are encouraged to fall apart," she said. "It is in these cases that we are in danger of losing our rights."

Klein approached Cuaron with her new book after watching Children of Men, his dark portrait of a terrorism-shocked society in the not-so-distant future.

Scenes from the acclaimed film were close to what she has seen in disaster zones around the world today, Klein said, so she decided to send him her book.

"Actually I was just hoping he would write a little blurb for the back jacket. He called me and the next thing, we were making this short together," she said Thursday afternoon.

"I read the book and realized its importance in factually exposing what lies behind the economic system that has been globally imposed and that is so harmful to humanity and the planet. I called Naomi immediately and told her that I would do everything I could to help the book get read," Cuaron said in a statement.

The film was originally to be distributed for free online, with Klein planning to use it for lectures, "just to show people what I was talking about," she said, hours before heading to be interviewed by CBC Radio host Carol Off about her new book at the University of Toronto.

"And [then] he goes and got it into all these fancy festivals," she joked.

The author of the bestselling No Logo and documentary filmmaker behind 2004's The Take praised her collaborator Cuaron as "brilliant."

"It was amazing working with Alfonso. People do crazy favours for him, just because he asks," she said.

"Print is amazing at doing certain things really, really well... but film is so emotional," Klein said, adding that making a short has also allowed her to use historical footage to help get her message across.