Roger Rapoport, a 1968 U-M grad, wasn’t surprised this fall when angry and media-savvy undergrads helped to unseat athletic director Dave Brandon. As a Michigan Daily reporter, he himself helped unseat a regent, Eugene Power, over a perceived conflict of interest. “Students continue to have a great deal of power,” Rapoport says of the anti-Brandon protests, “and in this case they used it wisely.”

A journalist turned book publisher turned filmmaker, Rapoport cast local actors Alex Leydenfrost and Julia Glander in his second movie, Pilot Error, and shot scenes at Amadeus restaurant and the Quinn Evans architectural firm. The film will be at Quality 16 on Dec. 8, 9, and 11–theater owner Bob Goodrich (U-M Law, 1964) is co-producer.

To write the film, Rapoport drew on his book The Rio/Paris Crash, about the mysterious disappearance of an Air France plane in 2009. In the film version, a former Daily editor whose best friend vanished in the crash searches for answers. But Rapoport wanted to make more than a traditional thriller. When the real plane’s “black box” was finally recovered, it revealed that pilot error had contributed to the tragedy, and the film warns about shortcomings in pilot training.

Rapoport doesn’t seem nostalgic for the Ann Arbor of the turbulent ’60s. As the Brandon affair proved, student protests still have power. And, he adds, “the current Cottage Inn is a big step up from the Cottage Inn of our day.”