An Unreasonable Man - A film about Ralph Nader

A favorite at the 2006 Sundance Film Festival, An Unreasonable Man will open nationally in February.

From celebrated public advocate to vilified political spoiler, AN UNREASONABLE MAN tracks the remarkable course of Nader’s crusading career while exploring the hotly debated implications of his undaunted idealism. A favorite at the 2006 Sundance Film Festival, the film will open nationally in February.

In 1966, General Motors, the most powerful corporation in the world, launched a secret smear campaign against Ralph Nader, an obscure thirty-two-year-old public interest lawyer who’d written a book critical of one of their cars, the Corvair. After G.M.’s campaign was revealed, the scandal launched Nader into national prominence and established him as the leader of the modern Consumer Movement. Over the next thirty years and without ever holding public office, Nader built a legislative record that rivals any contemporary president: seat belts, airbags, product labeling, nuclear safety – all largely due to the efforts of Nader and his citizen groups. Yet today, when most people hear his name, they think of the man who cost the Democrats the 2000 Presidential election. No longer the exemplary man of the people, Nader has now become a pariah, even among former friends and allies.

Through rare archival footage and over forty on-camera interviews with supporters, critics, former employees (“Nader’s Raiders”), and Ralph Nader himself, first-time filmmakers Henriette Mantel (who once worked for Nader) and Steve Skrovan tell a fascinating and complex story of America’s most passionate and polarizing private citizen. As the country faces an uncertain future, ever caught between ideals and compromises, AN UNREASONABLE MAN is a revealing glimpse – through the prism of one man’s political life – at the conflicted character of a nation.