PNW Awards: WTO/99
November 23, 2025
Seattle Film Critics Society Pacific Northwest Awards
An immersive archival documentary that reanimates the clash between the then-emerging World Trade Organization (WTO) and the more than 40,000 people who took to the streets of Seattle to protest the WTO's impact on human rights, labor, and the future effects of continued globalization.
Director Ian Bell scheduled to attend for introduction and Q&A.
Tickets
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Sunday, November 23, 2025
“Some documentaries just feel like a sock in the jaw. Ian Bell’s fiery and explosive archival picture WTO/99 is that kind of film. ... in totality, WTO/99 is nothing short of a galvanizing historical document that tells us exactly how we arrived on the crumbling ground we’re presently standing on.” — Robert Daniels, RogerEbert.com
From November 30th to December 3rd 1999, tens of thousands of people occupied the streets of downtown Seattle to make known their concerns about the existence of the World Trade Organization and its impacts on the environment, human rights, and labor in the largest protests against economic globalization the US has ever seen. The protests brought together people from divergent sections of society—anarchists, environmentalists, labor unions, consumer protection advocates, pro-democracy groups, and even religious organizations. These protestors gathered in direct action hoping to dissuade world leadership from continued support of the WTO and strived to focus the public’s attention to the kind of future the WTO would bring forth.
Building from a roughly 1,000 hour archive, WTO/99 reanimates the ideological conflicts that drew thousands to the streets of Seattle in hopes for a better future. The film is an immersive visual artifact of a week that brought 40,000 people together to warn of environmental collapse, the vanishing middle class, and what the full inclusion of China in the World Trade Organization would mean for our collective future. The protesters—seen as a rabble-rousing nuisance at the time, yet appearing prophetic today—were met with extreme violence by a militarized police force, an all-too-fitting way to usher in a new century; one that is now defined by US failure to address climate change and increasing state aggression.
- Director: Ian Bell
- Country: USA
- Year: 2025
- Running Time: 95 min.
- Producer: Laura Tatham, Alex Megaro, Ian Bell
- Editors: Alex Megaro, Ian Bell
- Music: Third Coast Percussion
- Website: Official Film Website
- Language: English