By Michael Schneider

General editor of the variety

Donald Trump recently announced that he would hold an “awards gala” in honor of the January 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol — just the latest example of the ongoing revisionist history and whitewashing of the extreme violence that took place that day. However, the A24 film “The Sixth” documents, through gruesome footage, what really happened and how it was ultimately the Washington, D.C., Metropolitan Police Department that saved the government from a massive, deadly mob when the National Guard, stationed just miles away, failed to show up. Filmmakers Andrea Nix Fine and Sean Fine had a camera crew at Trump’s January 6 rally in D.C. (which was timed to Congress certifying Joe Biden as president), and some of what they captured appears in “The Sixth.” But much of the documentary is cobbled together using cameras and other videographers who were in and around the Capitol. (The duo, however, say they did not pay for footage of actual insurrectionists.)

Perhaps the most shocking footage takes place in an access tunnel to the Capitol, where a handful of MPD officers are bloodied and beaten for hours as the last line of defense. As the film drives home, a bloody coup was far more likely that day than most realize.