William Shakespeare would have a field day with Wiebo Ludwig.
Equally vilified as a terrorist and hailed for his long-standing battle against oil and gas giants, the reclusive preacher at the centre of David York’s new documentary, Wiebo’s War, is as interesting, complicated and flawed as a protagonist gets.
York uses King Lear to describe the notorious man suspected of the 2008 EnCana pipeline bombings.
“I am a man more sinned against than sinning,” York, in town for the Vancouver International Film Festival, recited. “He’s a conflicted family man.
What he was doing in his struggle was trying to defend his family and his land. You can’t judge somebody until you get a sense of the pressures they’re under and that became the purpose of the film … to give the audience a means to arrive at their own judgments, to see if they’d be sympathetic and to think about what they’d do if they were in that situation.”
It wasn’t long after York started filming that a new string of bombings surfaced and the Ludwig family was thrust in the middle of a police and media storm again.
The access afforded to York allowed him to capture Ludwig — everything from his faith and motives to the horrific health effects nearby drilling has had on his family — in a way that national news headlines simply couldn’t convey.
“My picture of him is completely at odds of the current affairs version of him that everybody knows,” said York. “He’s a human being, and so am I, and so are you.”
Wiebo’s War screens today at 12:30 p.m. at Empire Granville 7 Cinemas.
Local news from metronews.ca/vancouver
About The Reporter
