Former White House staffer explains why Casablanca’s Rick is the perfect spy

In The Final Year, filmmaker Greg Barker followed President Barack Obama’s foreign policy team as it attempted to shape international policy in the last year of his presidency. After the film’s premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival, we spoke with Barker and two members of that foreign policy team—Samantha Power, former ambassador to the United Nations, and Ben Rhodes, speechwriter and former assistant to the president—who worked closely with Obama during his presidency. In the video above, Rhodes explains to us why Humphrey Bogart’s character, Rick, from Casablanca (both Rhodes’ and Barker’s favorite movie) is the perfect undercover operative.