"Requiem for the American Dream," a thought-provoking film that discusses the stark social inequality in the United States, is premiering at New York's Tribeca Film Festival.

The 78-minute-long documentary is part of New York's Tribeca Film Festival, whose program's line-up features a variety of independent films including documentaries, narrative features and shorts, as well as family-friendly films.

Through interviews with Noam Chomsky, who is widely known as an American linguist and philosopher and is described in the film as "the most important intellectual alive," the three-person filmmaking team of Peter Hutchison, Kelly Nyks and Jared Scott ponder a widespread problem in the United States today -- the concentration of wealth and power in the hands of a select few.

Xinhua interviewed the producers Wednesday.

"We're all fond of Noam's work. We want this to be a long form of discussion, with Professor Noam. We want to be candid, close, personal, intimate; we want you to be right there with Professor Noam," Scott said.

Chomsky reveals the principles that have brought forth historically unprecedented inequality while looking back at five decades of policies designed to benefit the most affluent at the expense of the majority. Meanwhile, Chomsky also reflects on his own life of activism and political participation.

"We all know that the United States now probably has the highest degree of inequality in all the advanced countries worldwide, and there's a lot of talks about dangers and corrosive effects of inequality on democracy and on our country," Hutchison said.

"A lot of people have been talking different ways we could or should change, but it's our belief that unless we all clearly understand how we got here, how we arrived at the staggering degree of inequality, that we're not going to be in a position to change anything," he said.

Through interviews filmed over four years, Chomsky provides insight into one of the defining characteristics of today's American society -- the demise of the middle class, and with it, functioning democracy. The discourse with Chomsky gives the film a deeply personal touch.

"The film, our job, as a storyteller, is to clearly lay out the current social, economic and democratic landscape and then, with that illumination allow the viewers to think about how the society and community want to move forward together," Nyks said.

Hutchison said that their team spared no efforts to try to make this film as accessible to as many age groups as possible, in the hope that especially high school and college students will go see the movie and discuss it.

"Our hope is that parents would bring their children to this movie. The community can share and watch it together, and then talk about it together," he said.

Finally, Hutchison said they hoped that the film will generate discussion and enjoy global popularity as "inequality is not simply an American issue, it is very much a global issue, which affects everybody now. Everyone needs to think about it and talk about it seriously." Endi

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