Watch Robert Redford And Cate Blanchett In The First Clip From TRUTH

Sony Pictures Classics has released the first video, along with three new images, from TRUTH.

Starring Robert Redford as Dan Rather, Cate Blanchett, Topher Grace, Bruce Greenwood, Elisabeth Moss, and Dennis Quaid, the film premieres on Saturday at the Toronto International Film Festival.

TRUTH is an independent feature film based on the book Truth and Duty: the Press, the President, and the Privilege of Power by Mary Mapes.

Check out the clip below. (via EW)

On the morning of September 9, 2004, veteran CBS News producer MARY MAPES (Cate Blanchett) believed she had every reason to feel proud of a broadcast journalism job well done.

By the end of the day, Mapes, CBS News, and the venerable CBS News anchor DAN RATHER (Robert Redford) would be under harsh scrutiny.

The evening before, 60 Minutes II had aired an investigative report, produced by Mapes and reported on-air by Rather, that purported to reveal new evidence proving that President George W. Bush had possibly shirked his duty during his service as a Texas Air National Guard pilot from 1968 to 1974. The piece asserted that George W. Bush had not only exploited family connections and political privilege to avoid the Vietnam War by joining the Texas Air National Guard, but he had failed for many months to fulfill his most basic Guard obligation—showing up on base.

Mapes and her team of researchers had scrambled under a tight deadline to pull together both on air eyewitness testimony and newly-disclosed documents to make their case, and they felt confident that their story was solid. In the lead-up to the 2004 Bush v. Kerry presidential election, the “Bush-Guard” story could have had profound ramifications.

But within days after the story broke, George W. Bush’s military service record was no longer the focus of media and public scrutiny. Instead, it was 60 Minutes, Mapes, and Rather who were under question: the documents supporting their investigation were denounced as forgeries, and the 60 Minutes staff was accused of shoddy journalism or, perhaps worse, accused of being duped. Eventually, Mapes would lose her job and reputation. Dan Rather would step down prematurely as CBS News anchor.

In his stirring final broadcast, Dan Rather invokes the public trust in journalism’s quest for truth, and closes his farewell with his trademark “Courage.”

Robert Redford talks about the delicate business of real lives intersecting with screen lives: “I said ‘Look, Dan. I’m going to be playing you. This is tricky. Would you like to tell me anything? From your point of view, can you tell me what this was really about?’ And he said, ‘Yes, it was about loyalty. It was a tripod loyalty to my partner and producer, Mary Mapes, my boss, CBS, and myself. It was all equal. I was equally loyal to CBS, my boss, and equally loyal to my compatriot.’”

Inspired by the “church of CBS” ethos, Vanderbilt and composer Brian Tyler aimed for an almost devotional quality in the music behind the key montage of Americans watching the 60 Minutes II report on President George W. Bush’s Texas Air National Guard service.

Written and directed by James Vanderbilt, TRUTH opens in theaters on October 16.