LAS VEGAS -- Filmmaker Steve Kalafer, a three-time Oscar nominee, is at work on a documentary about Volkswagen's diesel emissions crisis, a project that's close to home.
That's because the 66-year-old producer of 16 films, mostly documentaries, is also a Volkswagen dealer.
His best-known film may be the 2004 short Sister Rose's Passion, about a nun fighting anti-Semitism in the Catholic Church. It was nominated for an Academy Award and was a prize winner at the Tribeca Film Festival.
The new one is called Backfire: The Volkswagen Fraud of the Century, and Kalafer is living the story himself.
In 39 years as a dealer, Kalafer has seen car companies in crisis before -- such as with the Ford Pinto disaster in the 1970s and Audi's unintended-acceleration fiasco in the 1980s. Those brands eventually recovered, but Kalafer isn't so sure about VW in the wake of its diesel emission crisis.