{"id":82482,"date":"2025-08-20T01:08:11","date_gmt":"2025-08-20T01:08:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/82482\/"},"modified":"2025-08-20T01:08:11","modified_gmt":"2025-08-20T01:08:11","slug":"neon-sets-men-of-war-release-date","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/82482\/","title":{"rendered":"Neon Sets ‘Men of War’ Release Date"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tBilly Corben<\/a> and Jen Gatien\u2019s \u201cMen of War,\u201d one of the first documentaries that Neon<\/a> produced and funded, will be available to watch via PVOD starting Sept. 9.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe doc, which premiered at the 2024 Toronto Film International Festival, chronicles Operation Gideon, a 2020 sea invasion of Venezuela by a coalition of local dissidents and American mercenaries to overthrow President Nicolas Maduro. Former Green Beret Jordan Goudreau planned the failed mission that happened just weeks after the Trump administration placed a $15 million bounty on President Maduro.<\/p>\n

\n\tGoudreau, a former Special Forces soldier who served tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, planned to land in Venezuela via speedboat with approximately 60 other men in an attempt to capture Maduro, an authoritarian president. At the time, Goudreau said that he and his team were acting to protect Venezuela\u2019s democracy after Maduro\u2019s 2018 re-election, which was boycotted by the opposition and condemned as undemocratic by the U.S.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn 2024, Goudreau was charged with conspiracy, smuggling goods from the U.S. and unlawful possession of a machine gun, among 14 counts. His trial is expected to begin soon.<\/p>\n

\n\tCorben (\u201cCocaine Cowboys\u201d) and Gatien (\u201cLimelight\u201d) began filming \u201cMen of War\u201d in 2021. In the 102-minute film, the directors trace the botched incursion and the few characters who lived to tell the tale: a journalist, Goudreau, a Miami-based dissident, an army general, and the brother of one of the captured American mercenaries. The doc also features exclusive prison recordings of retired Venezuelan General Cliver Alcal\u00e1 Cordones and interviews with J.J. Rend\u00f3n, strategist to Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaid\u00f3. <\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWhen the filmmakers approached us with the wildly compelling story behind \u2018Men of War,\u2019 we couldn\u2019t have imagined that story would still be playing out in 2025,\u201d Neon said in a statement.<\/p>\n

\n\tVariety film critic Murtada Elfadl described the film<\/a> as \u201ca morally complicated portrait of a mercenary who thinks he\u2019s a righteous soldier: a man who obviously cannot grapple with the consequences of his actions.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tPrior to the doc\u2019s TIFF debut, Neon\u2019s EVP of nonfiction, Dan O\u2019Meara, told Variety<\/a> that \u201cMen of War\u201d appealed to the company for a number of reasons.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cEvery part of [Goudreau\u2019s] project felt ill-conceived and impossible,\u201d said O\u2019Meara. \u201cThey approached [Venezuela] by boat, and that boat broke down. There also were not that many guys involved. Everybody was wondering, \u2018What were these guys thinking? How could they have thought that they were going to get away with this, and at whose behest?\u2019 Jordan was made this laughing stock. As it turns out, he was working for and had been hired by very powerful people in the Venezuelan opposition party, and he was in touch with the White House. Mike Pence\u2019s people were giving [Goudreau] the tacit wink-wink like, \u2018If this all works out, you will have our support.\u2019 Jordan was also in touch with Keith Schiller, Trump\u2019s former bodyguard. So, he believed at the time that he was undertaking a project that had the blessing of the Trump administration.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tIn May, Neon theatrically released \u201cMen of War\u201d and qualified it for Oscar consideration. <\/p>\n

\n\tSince Neon\u2019s 2017 inception, the company has become a major player in the doc landscape, distributing \u201cFire of Love,\u201d \u201cMoonage Daydream,\u201d \u201cAll the Beauty and the Bloodshed.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cMen of War\u201d was produced and financed by Neon, in association with Rakontur, Deerjen, and Hyperobject. The film was produced by Alfred Spellman, Jen Gatien, and Billy Corben. Tom Quinn, Dan O\u2019Meara, Todd Schulman, and Adam McKay serve as executive producers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Billy Corben and Jen Gatien\u2019s \u201cMen of War,\u201d one of the first documentaries that Neon produced and funded,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":82483,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[49494,49,48,49495,75,337,12507],"class_list":{"0":"post-82482","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-movies","8":"tag-billy-corben","9":"tag-ca","10":"tag-canada","11":"tag-documentaries-to-watch","12":"tag-entertainment","13":"tag-movies","14":"tag-neon"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82482","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=82482"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82482\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/82483"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=82482"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=82482"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=82482"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}