The storming of the US Capitol on January 6 by a mob of Donald Trump supporters in a doomed bid to reverse the 2020 presidential election has been extensively documented, but never as viscerally as in the new documentary 64 Days. Its director, Nick Quested and his team embedded for three months with the Proud Boys, the far-Right, all-male street militia informally known as “Trump’s army”. You see them leading the mob’s march with battle cries such as “This is the second f-----g revolution” and “Trump’s coming!”.

As a result, some footage from the documentary played a key role in the congressional committee’s investigation into Donald Trump’s role in the attempt to overturn the election. It premiered to 20 million US TV viewers when it was screened across most of the major US TV networks, with Quested himself being summoned as a witness, to testify before the Jan 6 committee.

The shadow of that January day still looms large on the US body politic. Vice President Kamala Harris recently delivered her closing election argument on the Ellipse, where Trump held his Stop the Steal rally preceding the Capitol insurrection. In contrast Quested has made an unlikely, unsolicited, entrance into the US political arena.