Former U.S. Green Beret Jordan Goudreau, who was arrested on July 31 in connection to his failed 2020 coup to remove Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, is the subject of Neon’s latest documentary “Men of War.”
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Directed by Billy Corben (“God Forbid”) and Jen Gatien (“Limelight”) “Men of War” follows Goudreau, who, according to the film’s logline “finds himself in over his head and on the run after mounting the failed Venezuela coup and being chased by the American government who he spent his life fighting for.”
Goudreau, 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’s democracy after Maduro’s 2018 re-election, which was boycotted by the opposition and condemned as undemocratic by the U.S.
On Wednesday, Goudreau, 48, was charged with conspiracy, smuggling goods from the U.S. and unlawful possession of a machine gun, among 14 counts.
For “Men of War,” Corben and Gatien interviewed Goudreau, his parents and co-conspirators as well as the families of the Americans who were taken hostage in Venezuela due to the coup.
The 92-minute docu, which was funded and produced by Neon, is set to debut at a prestigious fall film festival. According to a Neon spokesman, the film “might” be re-edited to incorporate the evolving crisis in Venezuela over Maduro’s recent controversial re-election and Goudreau’s arrest.
Corbin and Gatien began filming Goudreau in 2021. Neon’s EVP of nonfiction Dan O’Meara explains that “Men of War” appealed to the company for a number of reasons.
“Every part of (Goudreau’s) project felt ill conceived and impossible,” says O’Meara. “They approached (Venezuela) by boat and that boat broke down. There also were not that many guys involved. Everybody was wondering, ‘What these guys were thinking? How could they have thought that they were going to get away with this and at whose behest?’ 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’s people were giving (Goudreau) the tacit wink wink like, ‘If this all works out you will have our support.’ Jordan was also in touch with Keith Schiller, Trump’s former bodyguard. So, he believed at the time that he was undertaking a project that had the blessing of the Trump administration.”
Neon both produced and funded “Men of War.” O’Meara explains that Goudreau is the doc’s “unreliable narrator.”
“Jordan is a very compelling and complicated guy,” says O’Meara. “He has his own agenda and so we had to do the work in the film of showing different points of view of what really happened. A lot of what he was trying to do in the doc was to redeem his own story and the reasons why he did what he did. What the film does very well is expose the people who were behind the scenes and got away with it and those who got away unscathed.”
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Since Neon’s 2017 inception, the company has become a major player in the doc landscape distributing box office hits including “Fire of Love” and 2022’s highest grossing doc, “Moonage Daydream.” The indie studio acquired Laura Poitras’ “All the Beauty and the Bloodshed” about artist and activist Nan Goldin in 2022 before the film was scheduled to make its world premiere at the Venice Film Festival.
“As Neon was starting to grow three or four years ago and being more active in production on scripted and unscripted content, part of that was documentary,” says O’Meara. “And while we didn’t ever say, let’s set out to make a slate of documentaries, we got more active in funding and producing docs in 2021 and 2022.”
Recent Neon docus, all of which Dan O’Meara produced and help fund include: Andrew McCarthy’s “Brats,” about the stars who came to be known in the ’80s as the famous Brat Pack, which sold to Hulu following its premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival; Jazmin Jones’ “Seeking Mavis Beacon,” which premiered at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival and will be released by Neon in limited theaters on Aug, 30; and “Bad Actor: A Hollywood Ponzi Scheme,” a doc that premiered at the 2024 Tribeca Festival and details aspiring movie star Zach Avery (aka Horwitz) who defrauded investors of out $227 million and pulled off the entertainment industry’s biggest Ponzi scheme. (Neon released “Bad Actor: A Hollywood Ponzi Scheme” this summer.)
In addition to “Men of War”,” Neon’s upcoming doc slate includes Asif Kapadia’s “2073,” a genre-bending thriller documentary set in a near-distant dystopian future which will have its world premiere at the Venice Film Festival and Academy Award-nominee Raoul Peck’s “Orwell,” about the famed author George Orwell.
With Apple, Netflix, Disney and Amazon largely moving away from social issue fare in favor of more commercial, common denominator docus that won’t ruffle any feathers, Neon is one of the few mainstream distribution and funding companies that get behind politically driven docus like “Orwell.”
O’Meara says despite the political climate, Peck’s Orwell was a no-brainer.
“Tom Quinn texted me and it said, ‘Raoul Peck directing George Orwell doc. Alex Gibney is producing. In or out?’,” recalles O’Meara. “I said, ‘In all day long.’ A subject that iconic matched with a filmmaker and producer of that caliber – it just doesn’t happen. But that was a year and a half ago. The film won’t be released until sometime next year. Is the world in 2025 going to look like what it looked like when we signed on? Are people going to watch a George Orwell doc during a Trump administration? Are (audiences) going to be so exhausted by politics? We didn’t think about that (when we signed on) because it was the excitement of the opportunity of working with Raoul and making a film about that subject and just knowing if we build it they will come.”
“Men of War” is produced by Alfred Spellman at rakontur (“God Forbid,” “Cocaine Cowboys”) and executive produced by O’Meara and Hyperobjects’ Adam McKay and Todd Schulman. Neon will handle “Men of War” sales.
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