It’s fitting that, for his latest documentary, Alex Gibney turns his camera on Hunter Thompson, the most famous boundary-bending journalist of the 20th century. Gibney, too, has made it his project to challenge the corruption of contemporary journalism (though in a far more sober, and sobering, way). With network news growing ever more vacuous, and news organizations leaving information gathering to bloggers and other amateurs, Gibney has taken his project in the opposite direction, crafting long-form investigative documentaries that demonstrate integrity, imagination and, above all, guts. And they remind us that the best muckraking is edge-of-your seat entertaining. The painstakingly researched, Oscar-nominated Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room (2005) traveled deep where mainstream reporters fear to tread, suggesting that unbridled capitalism has sent our moral compass out of whack. Gibney’s Taxi to the Dark Side (2007), another Oscar nominee grapples head on with the abuses at the Abu Ghraib, connecting the dots between reckless, arrogant American policy and the unconscionable behavior of our troops abroad. Gonzo keeps the heat on, using Thompson’s story as a prism through which to examine the absurdities of American culture. In addition to his own achievements, Gibney is a catalyst in nonfiction filmmaking, producing films for Eugene Jarecki (Trials of Henry Kissinger), Marc Levin (Mr. Lightning) and Antoine Fuqua (Lightning in a Bottle), along with segments of the landmark PBS series, The Blues. It is an honor to bestow this year’s True Vision Award to one of America’s essential filmmaker-journalists.