Democracy seems to be making a comeback. Fed up with massive corporate bailouts and the death grip the richest 1% have on power and influence in this country, thousands of Americans have been taking to the streets in protest, camping out in public parks and railing against greed and inequality as part of the Occupy Wall Street movement. At the same time, outraged Tea Party “patriots” have been mobilizing against what they see as out-of-control federal spending, unsustainable national debt, and unconstitutional government intrusion into the lives of ordinary Americans­. In both cases, and despite their very real political differences, people of all backgrounds and ideological stripes seem suddenly to be rising up against economic and institutional injustice in the great American tradition of grassroots citizen protest.

But exactly how grassroots are these movements? How populist is their alleged populist fervor? And how much do they speak for the interests of middle and working class Americans?

Well, in the case of The Tea Party, at least, the answer from filmmaker Taki Oldham is not much at all.

In his stunning new documentary The Billionaires’ Tea Party, Oldham infiltrates the Tea Party and discovers that the movement’s anti-government rage is less the product of populist anger than of a carefully orchestrated PR campaign funded by a couple of powerful billionaires. What Oldham finds has to be seen to be believed.

From raucous health care town hall meetings where irate voters parrot insurance industry PR to anti-climate change “citizen groups” that turn out to be funded by big oil companies, The Billionaires’ Tea Party offers a terrifying look at how corporate elites are exploiting the anxieties of ordinary Americans — capitalizing on anger, resentment, and paranoia to advance a narrow, often anti-democratic, agenda.