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PARK CITY, Utah (AP) — "Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief" has premiered at the Sundance Film Festival to a packed house, and with police protection.
Director Alex Gibney's film claims that the church routinely intimidates, manipulates and even tortures its members.
Before Sunday's premiere, the Church of Scientology took out full-page ads in the New York Times and Los Angeles Times claiming the documentary is full of falsehoods.
But Gibney interviewed former Scientology believers, including Oscar-winning director Paul Haggis, who left the church in 2009 after decades of membership.
As Haggis climbed to the highest levels of Scientology, he finally learned its founder's ultimate theory: That a tyrannical galactic overlord named Xenu dropped frozen bodies from millions of years ago into volcanoes, and those spirits attach themselves to people today. Scientology claims to "clear" the body and mind of those spirits.
The church says Gibney refused to meet with members it offered as sources. But Gibney says the church declined all requests for interviews, as did John Travolta and Tom Cruise, both of whom are Scientologists.
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