Writer: Mark Boal

Mark Boal was a journalist embedded with a bomb disposal unit in Iraq, and The Hurt Locker came directly out of that reporting. It won him the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay.

Zero Dark Thirty applied the same method to the hunt for bin Laden and generated a sustained public argument about whether its depiction of torture endorsed the practice. Boal and Bigelow declined to resolve the question for the audience.

Detroit continued the approach. The consistent method is reporting first, dramatisation second, with the procedural detail carrying the meaning.