Jim: The James Foley Story

The beheading of American journalist James Foley in August 2014 was the incident that first brought awareness of ISIS’ extreme brutality to the public. In this, ISIS achieved its objective of instilling terror in its purported enemies (essentially all of us) — dehumanizing Foley by replacing him with the indelible image of a captive in an orange jumpsuit facing his own death.

In Jim: The James Foley Story, Brian Oakes, a childhood friend of Foley’s, sets out to redeem the man behind the event. Winner of the Audience Award for documentary at Sundance, this film is a moving drama of a family caught up in an unbearable crisis. But hovering over the story from beginning to end are challenging questions about the practice of journalism in an age of global terrorism and news disseminated by way of social media.