Reason.com, the web site for the libertarian magazine Reason, has written a very nice post about Cristina Khuly’s documentary ‘Shoot Down’. An excerpt:
Now, from first-time director Cristina Khuly, comes Shoot Down, a brilliantly rendered and scrupulously even-handed documentary revisiting the 1996 Cuban downing of two civilian planes over international waters, both piloted by Miami-based exiles from the group Brothers to the Rescue. Khuly, a 37-year-old sculptor, is the niece of shoot-down victim Armando Alejandre Jr.
An event soon overshadowed by the saga of Elian Gonzales, the attack on the unarmed Brothers to the Rescue planes is now largely forgotten outside Miami. And despite the smokescreen of misinformation presented by Castro and his foreign enablers, the facts of the story are rather straightforward and grimly characteristic of a totalitarian regime.
As three Brothers to the Rescue planes approached Cuban territory, the lead plane, piloted by the group’s founder Jose Basulto, briefly breached Cuban airspace. While the planes were searching for refugees in the water, officials in Havana, tipped off by a mole in the Brothers leadership, scrambled Soviet-made MiG fighter planes to knock the planes out of the sky. Basulto’s plane managed to escape. When the other two were vaporized by Cuban missiles, both were flying over international waters.
Do yourself a favor and read the whole article.
Click here for info about Shoot Down and where its playing.