Bullets and Bucks investigates the deadly scandal behind the 2008 explosion at an ammunition dismantling factory in Gërdec, Albania, where 26 people were killed, hundreds were injured and thousands of homes were damaged or destroyed. The film follows journalist Ilva Tare as she examines how inexperienced villagers came to be dismantling artillery shells by hand, and why the disaster exposed far deeper questions about corruption, arms dealing and political accountability.
The documentary later inspired writer Guy Lawson to investigate the Gërdec arms scandal, a story that became his book Arms and the Dudes and was later adapted into the Hollywood film War Dogs. At its centre, Bullets and Bucks asks why, after so much loss and evidence of wrongdoing, justice remained so elusive.
