School of Assassins Backdrop Blur
School of Assassins Poster
United States
7.3 0h 18m

School of Assassins

Human rights abuses by graduates of the U.S. Army School of the Americas (SOA) are chillingly documented at the beginning of the campaign to close the school.

Watch Now

Top Cast

  • Susan Sarandon

    Susan Sarandon

    Narrator (voice)

Overview

Human rights abuses by graduates of the U.S. Army School of the Americas (SOA) are chillingly documented at the beginning of the campaign to close the school.

Rating

7.3 / 10
3 Reviews
0 Popular

1 Reviews

  • CinemaSerf
    CinemaSerf
    6 Jan 1, 2026

    Using some archive footage of atrocities committed in Latin America in the 1980s and early 90s, this short documentary questions the work of the US Army’s “School of the Americas” in Georgia. Ostensibly, it offers a training facility to soldiers from the likes of Guatemala, El Salvador and Nicaragua to enable them to return home replete with not just the skills of a modern day soldier, but with a sense of the values of their host nation. What’s fairly clear from the commentary, though, is that many of these people are guilty of committing acts of assassination and murder ranging from an archbishop to some 3-month old babies. With Rep. Joseph P. Kennedy II leading congressional efforts to close the school, it focuses on driving the audience to implore, or even instruct, their representatives to stop funding this operation. I can’t think the US is the only nation in the world to offer training to “allies” who end up being anything but, but the statistical evidence here that associates killings with the identities of known trainees would seem to suggest this place must be on borrowed time. Unfortunately, the film doesn’t make any attempt to balance any perceived benefits from the institution nor does it offer any comments from it’s proponents, which does render it a little like a public information film, but it is still quite a potent critique about empowering people to become lethal without any realistic hope of controlling their subsequent actions, or loyalties.

Recommendations

Night Will Fall

When Allied forces liberated the Nazi concentration camps in 1944-45, their terrible discoveries were recorded by army and newsreel cameramen, revealing for the first time the full horror of what had happened. Making use of British, Soviet and American footage, the Ministry of Information’s Sidney Bernstein (later founder of Granada Television) aimed to create a documentary that would provide lasting, undeniable evidence of the Nazis’ unspeakable crimes. He commissioned a wealth of British talent, including editor Stewart McAllister, writer and future cabinet minister Richard Crossman – and, as treatment advisor, his friend Alfred Hitchcock. Yet, despite initial support from the British and US Governments, the film was shelved, and only now, 70 years on, has it been restored and completed by Imperial War Museums under its original title "German Concentration Camps Factual Survey".

Night Will Fall

7.6 2014