Fidelis Cloer: Not your regular car salesman

At last night’s world premiere of Bulletproof Salesman, director Michael Tucker asked an uncomfortable question: How do we define war profiteer?

Along with The Prisoner or: How I Planned to Kill Tony Blair (which debuted at SXSW 2007) and Gunner Palace, this is his third documentary about the Iraq conflict. Here he follows Fidelis Cloer, a German businessman who sells armored (or, as he prefers to call them, blast-proof) cars into war zones. The bigger the war, the bigger the contracts. In the Q&A afterwards, Tucker admitted to an uncomfortable truth: that he is a war profiteer himself. If he makes any money off one of his films, that definitionally makes him a war profiteer. But, then again, so is a firm that sells bandages into a conflict zone. What he said he hoped distinguished him from Cloer is that when he sat in a hotel room in Afghanistan waiting for something bad to happen, he felt guilty about it.

Bulletproof Salesman plays on Monday at 6:30pm, and Thursday at 7:15pm. Both screenings are at the Austin Convention Center.

This article appears in March 7 • 2008.

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The Chronicle's first Culture Desk editor, Richard has reported on Austin's growing film production and appreciation scene for over a decade. A graduate of the universities of York, Stirling, and UT-Austin, a Rotten Tomatoes certified critic, and eight-time Best of Austin winner, he's currently at work on two books and a play.