The Sixth
Filmmaker Sean Fine ā96 set out to make a documentary about the peaceful transition of power. It did not go as planned.
The assignment was fairly straightforward. Academy Award-winning documentarians Sean Fine ā96 and his wife, Andrea Nix Fine, founders of Change Content, had hired a crew led by cinematographer Caz Rubacky to capture what was expected to be then-President Donald Trumpās last speech in office. It was Jan. 6, 2021.
āIronically, we were making a film about the peaceful transition of power,ā Fine explains.
Just before noon, Trump began addressing thousands of supporters from a park just south of the White House fence. As he had done for weeks prior, Trump repeatedly questioned the validity of the 2020 election. āAll of us here today do not want to see our election victory stolen by emboldened radical-left Democrats, which is what theyāre doing,ā he said. After speaking for more than an hour, Trump invited supporters to march to the Capitol, where Vice President Mike Pence was scheduled to officially certify the electoral vote and declare Joe Biden as the next president. āWe fight. We fight like hell and if you donāt fight like hell, youāre not going to have a country anymore,ā Trump told the crowd.
Twelve minutes after the speechās conclusion, reports indicate as many as 15,000 people moved on the Capitol from multiple directions. Thus began an insurrection that would not end for nearly six hours.
āHe had numerous chances to stop them, to get people to calm down,ā Fine contends. āYou see in our film that when he finally did, it was too late.ā
Rubacky, watching firsthand as the crowd began marching toward the Capitol, reached out to Fine and Nix Fine to ask if he should go as well. They gave him the green light as long as he continued to feel safe. The footage Rubacky and his team captured would become the backbone of THE SIXTH, a feature documentary produced in collaboration with A24 and released in May.
Even for seasoned documentarians, the footage was shocking.
āIt was like seeing the worst of human nature unfold for hours,ā Nix Fine says. āThereās this one moment that always sticks with me. Thereās this man up by the tunnel. Heās there within the whole group of insurrectionists, but heās screaming, āWeāre better than this! Stop!ā And heās trying to scream into this crowd of 10,000 people. Itās just heartbreaking. But it also pisses you off.ā
THE SIXTH tells the story of the day from the perspectives of six individuals who were there: freelance photographer Mel D. Cole, Rep. Jamie Raskin, Congressional staffer Erica Loewe, Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) Chief Robert J. Contee III, and MPD Officers Daniel Hodges and Christina Laury.
āWe wanted the film shaped by the words and emotions of people who went through it themselves. Everyone had a momentāor a few momentsāwhere they thought their life might end or something really bad would happen. It was so important to us to show that,ā Fine says.
āWe always talk about [the severity of] things based on how many people died. But I think thereās a toll that something like this takes. Itās not worse than people dying, but itās bad.ā
And yet, the film also reveals moments of hope and bravery, Fine says, pointing to the fact that each of the filmās subjectsāand many public servants on the sceneāchose to stay and defend the established democratic process.
āJamie Raskin, he did the right thing; he stayed all night. [Officers] Daniel Hodges and Christina Laury, they did the right thing, stayed on for hours, kept returning to the front line. They all were injured; they all couldāve just gone home. They believed in something about this country,ā he says.
Despite the fact that the attack on the Capitol is āthe most filmed crime sceneā in U.S. history, Nix Fine says many Americans havenāt truly grappled with its impact.
āThis film felt like what we can doāto be good citizens, to be good filmmakers, to be good human beings,ā she says. āYou owe it to yourself, as a citizen of this country, to understand what happened that day.ā
THE SIXTH is available for purchase or rent on streaming services including Prime Video, Apple TV, Google Play and YouTube, and Fine and Nix Fine have also launched a āStream It Forwardā campaign to bring the film to as many theaters and college campuses as possible.
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