It's Michael and them

As the tour wore on, Moore's handlers grew increasingly frosty, refusing to allow Melnyk and Caine to record sound at a Detroit appearance and having them escorted from another at Kent State University. In one scene, Moore's sister Anne is heard ordering the filmmakers to hand over their driver's licenses and is shown swatting at the filmmakers' camera. They were kicked out of Moore's Traverse City (Mich.) Film Festival after questioning his nonprofit's investments in defense contractor Halliburton and drug maker Eli Lilly.

"This is like the last taboo in the industry," said Caine. "Look at anything you want, but not your own."

Two key U.S. documentary film festivals -- Full Frame in Durham, N.C., and Silverdocs, the AFI/Discovery Channel event in Silver Spring, Md. -- declined to screen "Dissent," in part because of Michael Moore. Silverdocs hoped to present "Sicko," and Moore was a special guest at Full Frame. A rep for one film buyer told the filmmakers in an e-mail that they were wary of the "political nature" of the film and would distribute "Dissent" on DVD in Canada but not in the U.S. (The filmmakers passed.)

Melnyk and Caine viewed this as a sort of blacklisting. But there's just as much indication that for some, including Silverdocs' programmers who found "Dissent" uneven, the film simply didn't live up to expectations.

The filmmakers got an unexpected ally in John Pierson. Now a film instructor, he brokered the $3-million distribution deal with Warner Bros. for Moore's 1989 blockbuster "Roger & Me" and recently took on "Dissent" as a project for his producing class at the University of Texas at Austin during the South by Southwest Film Festival there. He praises "Dissent" as the first journalistic film about Moore. But Pierson is not convinced Melnyk and Caine have been unfairly marginalized as a result of it.

"When people have a choice, they'd rather stay on Michael Moore's good side," said Pierson. "But that doesn't mean there's a vast conspiracy to beat down his opponents."

In fact "Dissent" is just the latest in a series of documentaries that attempt to discredit Moore, although critics and some festival programmers consider it one of the more even-handed of the lot.

It's a dense film that aggregates a lot of old news long overshadowed by Moore's phenomenal commercial success. Still, the sheer volume of what it presents as Moore's exaggerations, omissions, discrepancies and ambiguities are provocative.