Q&A
‘A hall of mirrors’: Director Jen Gatien’s new documentary examines how a former U.S. soldier became embroiled in a failed foreign coup
Men of War, which revisits an attempt to overthrow Venezuela’s government in 2020, is the opening night film for the Double Exposure Investigative Film Festival.
In May 2020, former Green Beret Jordan Goudreau carried out his most ambitious mission since leaving the U.S. Army in 2016: Operation Gideon.
But Goudreau was no longer serving in the elite ranks of the military. Instead, under the name of his own private security firm, Silvercorp USA, the Canadian-American citizen claimed to be fighting for Venezuela’s freedom.
Directors Jen Gatien and Billy Corben’s most recent documentary, Men of War, is a complicated portrait of Goudreau, a soldier-turned-mercenary at the center of a failed coup against Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro. Eight of Goudreau’s men were killed; others were captured by Venezuelan security forces and sentenced to 24 years in prison.
“What I was so good at, what I was the best at, I could no longer do,” Goudreau told the filmmakers about being discharged from the U.S. Special Forces. In some ways, Operation Gideon — which enlisted exiled former members of Venezuela’s military — gave Goudreau a renewed sense of purpose. Yet, in July 2024, U.S. authorities accused him of violating federal arms control laws and charged him with conspiracy, smuggling goods from the United States and unlawful possession of a machine gun, among 14 counts. The trial is pending.
ICIJ spoke with Gatien about capturing Venezuela’s political landscape in 2020 for an international audience and premiering the film four years later, during a time of similar heightened tensions following the country’s 2024 presidential election. In July, Maduro controversially claimed electoral victory, despite Venezuela’s resurgent opposition party also stating it had won and receiving international support.
Men of War will be the opening night film at the Double Exposure Investigative Film Festival and Symposium in Washington, D.C. The annual forum at the intersection of investigative reporting and visual storytelling will run from Nov. 7 to 10, 2024.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
How do you first come across Jordan and the story behind Operation Gideon?
It was a Sunday morning and I was reading The Times and The New York Post. It was actually The New York Post that really cemented it for me because they had photos from [Jordan’s] Instagram and, in my mind, it felt like the central casting of an action hero. But he really is the thing that he says he is. And it was reported in a way in which it was on his shoulders entirely that he had mounted this coup and no other people had brought him into it.
That’s when I looked him up and found a phone number and texted the number, and when he responded, I didn’t know if there was a film there. I knew there was something, but in meeting him — the footage of which is in the film where he slams his fist, “They’re going to gut me like a trout,” and “I’m the fall guy” — at that point I realized that there was something so much bigger going on than Jordan. And it grew. I mean, it took four years to put [the film] together.
The film touches on many topics, from the U.S. military experience, American political relationships, freedom, and of course, Venezuela’s political climate. What would you say are the main themes?
For me in constructing the film, and with Billy Corbin constructing the film, we come about things very differently. Billy is a more traditional hard-nosed journalist, and my background is more as an anthropologist. So for me, the who, when, mattered for Operation Gideon, but I wanted to reach a greater truth and understand how did something like this happen and why? That was where it became more about a character study of Jordan and how he had the framework in his mind to do something like this.
I truly never had the perspective of how [coming home] was actually more challenging for many people than just remaining at war.
— Director Jen Gatien
Having never served in the military, I deeply wanted to understand the military experience and whether you’re ingrained with something like being a soldier, and it’s not a profession, but it’s who you are. I don’t feel like I really understood it until I not [only] did an interview with Jordan, but watched his life. When Jordan was living in civilian life, he actually was living on an Air Force Base in Florida, because that’s where he feels most comfortable. Even not being active in the military, it’s the place he likes most, and the place that’s home to him.
I truly believed that when guys and women came back from war, that it was like, great, we made it, we’re back, and this is good news. And I truly never had the perspective of how that was actually more challenging for many people than just remaining at war — it just never even occurred to me. What really compounded it for me [was what] Jordan says in the film, that more of his friends have died from suicide than from combat. And then to understand that Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, combined, the casualties of those wars do not come close to the suicides. That’s when I thought, okay, well, now I really want to understand what’s going on.
How did you decide this story was worth turning into a film?
Military coups are not in my wheelhouse. I’m like New York, nightclub-raised. So this was the total other to me in terms of guns and [solving] problems through war. Jordan’s oath is to the Constitution. He doesn’t vote. He really believes that his oath as a soldier is to the Constitution. But it was when I realized that Jordan, like myself, was from a blue-collar background in Canada, that I felt a kinship with him. I know how he was raised to a certain degree, and we in Canada don’t have a gun culture. We don’t have a military culture like in the United States. We don’t have this America First, we’re going to save the world [mentality]. So it spoke to me that clearly something in his military training — conditioning — there was something that I wanted to truly understand [about] how he came about. And I felt there was a story there, but it was only on a deeper dive that the problem became how do we wrangle it all in? Because it was sprawling.
What’s not in the film is that the impetus for Jordan returning from Mexico was that his mother was dying of cancer. And he had to get there knowing that there [were] Interpol notices for him. He was unraveling, and it was really [about] finding the vulnerable moments with him, because he has so much armor. And I think the film succeeds at picking that armor off and really getting to the human part of him, which took a long, a long time to get to.
During the process, were there any safety concerns when making this film?
Yes, the answer to that is yes. The answer to that is, I don’t think I took it seriously enough, because I truly never thought that an indictment would be coming down for him four-and-a-half years later. And he was always sort of wondering if that was going to happen, and I was very dismissive, thinking you’re fine, it’s been four years. But I was wrong. It’s going to forever be something I wonder: if the film had a hand in his own indictment, because whatever war he has fought in combat is nothing compared to being in a federal courtroom.
How did your team go about fact-checking Jordan’s narrative for the viewer throughout the film?
Not only did we have that, but we had a legal review process that was so rigorous. There are a lot of things that we had to take out because Jordan said them, but we couldn’t substantiate them with two sources outside of Jordan. It became really disheartening at a certain point to realize that there were a lot of things that he had receipts for, but that we couldn’t make claims about, because we couldn’t have them supported by two parties.
I’ve heard the term unreliable narrator, and it’s funny because even when he has the receipts to show, the story is so preposterous that it just seems so far-fetched. You’d see the text messages with Mike Pence’s assistant, but then they’re denying that Mike Pence ever met this person. So it became like a hall of mirrors. The denials of what Jordan’s story is are so convenient for people, but I leave it to the audience to decide [if] what he’s saying with a text message is sufficient. I’m hoping the film has people wondering, asking questions, and maybe being open [to the fact] that Jordan’s got an outrageous story, but it kind of checks out.
Being a filmmaker is one thing, but having this serve as a piece of investigative journalism is incredibly gratifying.
— Director Jen Gatien
Jordan’s behaviors throughout the whole operation were directed by his experience in the Special Forces. How were you able to navigate an almost fiction-like story, while still acknowledging this was real life and potentially real trauma?
That’s a beautiful question, because it’s something that informed every part of making this film, to not mock him, which had felt like the really easy way to go. He’s too easy to knock. So it was sort of like to do a deeper understanding, especially as a woman, to understand what is this male bravado, this bravery, needing to be seen as a hero, having mission and purpose and being all in. Jordan is all in when he does something, and I really wanted to understand it and honor it, give him the opportunity.
But also, the film does criticize it. It does come at a huge cost to other people and their lives. I didn’t want it to sugarcoat it, so I felt most privileged in him bearing his deepest wounds. [He was] talking about wanting to die and it’s not performed, it’s real. And wanting to have died in combat. I think there’s even footage of him saying “Every day, I wake up and I want to die.” And I really want the impact of that to be felt and understood. Why does this person feel this way? And I hope the film has the viewer reach an understanding about this need for a mission and purpose, so ingrained deeply in him, and that without it, civilian life has been really challenging for him, to say the least.
What would you say is the thing that you came to admire the most about Jordan?
He’s so easy to just reduce to a two-dimensional G.I. Joe character, and there was a depth to him. He oftentimes would blow my assumptions or prejudices or expectations of what he was, and it was like an onion, and you peel and he’s an amazing salsa dancer. Like, wait what? And his mom is his hero, not his grandfather who’s the war hero, but his mom. There were things that really astounded me.
But for right now, I’d say it’s the fact that he’s facing the music in this federal case, and that comes with an incredible amount of fear and care and being held. He’s got to face all the stuff, and he’s going to face [it], going to be before a jury, and it’s incredibly daunting. I do admire that. I’d say his bravery. There’s a shadow side, by the way. I’m not sugarcoating him. Jordan has some deep wounds, some deep anger and rage and the idea that the country he served for and was willing to die for repeatedly now sees him as the enemy. There’s a lot going on there. But there are people that did suffer as a result of Gideon, and I don’t want the film to ever overlook that.
Premiering Men of War this year specifically is very interesting, because Venezuela seems to still be suffering: four years later under the same regime, with a recent election, followed by government pushback to the results. What do you think this film can teach us?
It felt surreal in terms of the headlines. I never expected it, after four years for Maduro’s election to be nearing exactly the events that happened in the film four years earlier. I feel like a lot of people may not know who Maduro was, but by the time the film was ready to be launched in Toronto, he was a headline, and people were very familiar with him. For me, it’s very hard to understand the idea that violence solves problems. I’m not sure that it’s what I feel, especially the state of the world we’re in right now. But there’s definitely an argument to be made that there are some people that that’s the only language they understand.
How do you feel the film touches on democracy? We talk a lot about freedom, but some argue the root of Venezuela’s issues can be drawn back to democracy.
Jordan’s oath [to] the Constitution, it’s not pretend. It’s what he lives by. He’s willing to die for it. That’s something that I can’t say. I don’t know that I’d be willing to die for things. This guy is ready to die for that, for those rights, for America. If Jordan were in a courtroom and it was on fire, he wouldn’t leave the building until everybody, including the prosecutors, were out safely. He’d be the last person to leave. There’s just this type of person that takes this oath really seriously. So I don’t know [that] at a conscious level I looked out for democracy. I guess it’s like what could democracy mean to you, and are you willing to die for it? Because there are people that will.
And what about press freedom?
Sebastiana [Barráez, a Venezuelan journalist living in exile], when I met with her, it was in Spain. She was there with a family member that she didn’t want even mentioned because of the threat on her life for speaking [the] truth. And that’s why it was so important to me to have a journalist like her in the film and not someone that’s kicking it in Miami, who has no idea of what that experience is like in Venezuela, on the border, and what it’s like to live with your whole life unraveled, the rug pulled out from under you, and to be faced with prosecution for just speaking your reporting. Especially knowing how she puts herself, much like soldiers, there’s a greater thing, that greater truth for Sebastiana, that she’s willing to put her life on the line to report on the way in which Maduro is abusing people in his own country and incarcerating people who speak against him, and the bravery that she has in in reporting on that. It’s remarkable.
How do you feel about presenting Men of War in Washington D.C. for the first time?
I’m really excited for it to be in D.C., because I don’t know the audiences, but I’m really hoping for feedback from an audience who lives, breathes politics and that’s their town. To see if what is in the film is accurate in terms of how business gets done. And I think that’s going to be a really engaged audience in terms of the subject and really knowledgeable, so I’m actually really excited. And especially, so honored to be at an investigative journalism festival, because I don’t see myself as that. Being a filmmaker is one thing, but having this serve as a piece of investigative journalism is incredibly gratifying.
Tickets are on sale now for the Double Exposure Investigative Film Festival and Symposium in Washington, D.C., Nov. 7 to 10, 2024. Join director Jen Gatien at the screening of Men of War on opening night, followed by a Q&A.