Sundance: ‘Going Clear’ Filmmaker on Scientology, Wiretapping and Tom Cruise (Video)

As Alex Gibney‘s new Scientology doc made waves at the Sundance Film Festival, the director joined The Hollywood Reporter‘s festival lounge to elaborate on questions provoked by the controversial film.

Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief is an exposé of the religion based on the book of the same name by New Yorker writer Lawrence Wright (read an excerpt of the book here).

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One of the more talked-about aspects of the film after its premiere on Jan. 25 at the festival was the role that the church played in allegedly breaking up the relationship of Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman.

“The church felt that Nicole was pulling Tom away from the church, and Nicole’s father was a very prominent … psychologist in Australia. And psychology is like Satan to scientologists,” Gibney explained. “So they were very concerned and they worked at it in a number of ways, according to Marty [Rathbun, a top official in the church].”

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“One of the ways was to use church officials to try to turn their children against Nicole and to make them believe that she was called a suppressive person,” Gibney continued. “Marty Rathbun also refers to the fact that Tom Cruise at one point asked him to wiretap Nicole Kidman.”

“So there were a lot of things they were doing. And it was kind of a brutal process,” the filmmaker explained. “If you think about, what kind of church gets involved in the relationships of human beings and tries to destroy them?”