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A version of this story first appeared in the Oct. 16 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. To receive the magazine, click here to subscribe. By Rebecca Ford, Scott Johnson, The Hollywood Reporter The Church of Scientology really doesn’t want Alex Gibney to win an Oscar for his documentary Going Clear. Since the film — a scathing critique of the controversial church and its celebrity adherents, including Tom Cruise and John Travolta, based on Lawrence Wright’s best-selling book — won three Emmys in September, the filmmaker says he has been the subject of an increasingly hostile harassment campaign that has included a Scientology-backed “documentary” and outreach to members of the Academy’s doc branch, the group that selects the Oscar contenders. “In the last few weeks, Scientology has dramatically ratcheted up its corporate campaign against me and those in the film,” Gibney tells THR. The church has begun making its own film about Gibney and has reached out to several of his peers in connection with a planned profile in a Scientology magazine. Oscar nominee Rory Kennedy (Last Days in Vietnam), who, like Gibney, is a member of the Academy’s documentary branch and sits on the organization’s board of governors, says she recently was approached by a man who requested an interview about Gibney in connection with the Emmy wins. Kennedy says the man, who identified himself as Joe Taglieri, also separately contacted her husband, documentary writer Mark Bailey, and requested he participate in an article. Taglieri did not disclose his Scientology connection, although he has written for the Scientology magazine Freedom. “In this context, to not say [that he wrote for Freedom] was disingenuous, and I thought something was suspect,” says Kennedy. “He definitely had an agenda.” Related: Second Theater Near Scientology Headquarters Drops ‘Going Clear’ Film Other members of the Academy’s documentary branch who have been contacted by the church include producers John Battsek (Searching for Sugar Man) and Jon Else (The Day After Trinity). While Taglieri did not initially identify what outlet he was writing for, when asked, he said he was a freelance writer working on a piece for Freedom. Karin Pouw, a spokesperson for the church, acknowledges that “Freedom has been reaching out for some time for a piece about Alex Gibney’s propaganda film.” But, she says, “this has nothing to do with the Academy.” Indeed, Scientology has been battling Wright and then Gibney since before the Going Clear book was published in 2013. But as the film has won accolades and taken on a trajectory toward Oscar consideration, the animosity has ramped up, and there has been increased aggression at public events where Gibney and the subjects of Going Clear have spoken. (The film, which received an Oscar-qualifying theatrical run this winter before airing on HBO in March, was rereleased in theaters in September, though church pressure contributed to at least two Florida cinemas refusing to show it.) Alex Gibney, left, Sara Bernstein, Senior Vice President of Programming for HBO Documentaries, and author/producer Lawrence Wright, right, at the January premiere of ‘Going Clear’ (Photo by Arthur Mola/Invision/AP, File) On Sept. 28, Gibney was entering the Linwood Dunn Theater in Los Angeles for a talk about his career to the International Documentary Association when a man named Randall Stithapproached and told him he was making a movie about him. (According to IMDb, Stith has directed two films: Dead Wrong: How Psychiatric Drugs Can Kill Your Child and Making a Killing: The Untold Story of Psychotropic Drugging. Scientologists adamantly oppose psychiatry and its associated medication.) Stith stayed for the screening of Going Clear, after which he, Taglieri and another Scientologist, Norman Taylor, spoke out during the Q&A session against Taylor’s ex-wife and former Travolta handler, Sylvia “Spanky” Taylor, who appears in the film.