Meg Smaker was in high spirits last November. After spending 16 months filming at a Saudi terrorism suspect rehab center, her documentary Jihad Her Rehabilitation will be one of the world’s most prestigious showcases for her 2022 release. I just found out I was invited to her Sundance festival.
Her documentary focused on four former Guantánamo detainees sent to a rehabilitation center in Saudi Arabia, talking about their early fascination with al-Qaeda and the Taliban, the torture they endured, and their regrets.
Film critics warned that conservatives might take the reins on these human portraits, but the reviews after the festival’s screening were strong.
‘The absence of absolutes is the richest thing’ The Guardian said“This is a movie for intelligent people looking to challenge their preconceptions.” I have written: The film “feels like a miracle, like an act of defiant interrogation.”
But the attack comes not from the right, but from the left. Arab and Muslim filmmakers and their white supporters accused Smaker of Islamophobia and American propaganda. Some suggested that her race was disqualifying, assuming that the white woman was talking about an Arab.
Sundance leaders reversed their positions and apologized.
Walt Disney’s niece, Abigail Disney, executive director of “Jihab Rehab,” called it “pretty good,” in an email to Ms. Smaker. Now she has denied it.
The film “landed like a truckload of hate,” Disney wrote. Open letter.
Mr. Smaker’s film becomes almost unmanageable and out of reach of the audience. Prominent festivals canceled invitations, and documentary critics took to her social media to pressure investors, advisors, and even her friends to remove her name from the credits. She is on the verge of bankruptcy.
“Out of my naivety, I kept thinking that people would take the anger out of the system and realize that this movie wasn’t what they said it was,” Smaker said. I’m trying to tell a real story that many Americans have never heard.”
Conflicts over authorship and identity regularly disrupt a tightly-knit, largely left-wing ecosystem in the documentary world.
Many Arab and Muslim filmmakers, like others in the industry, are fighting for money and recognition, but “Jihad Rehabilitation” offers an all-too-familiar perspective. Smaker is the latest white documentary to tell the story of Muslims through the lens of the war on terrorism. According to them, these documentary makers take their white Western gaze and claim to film victims with empathy.
Film director Asia Boundaui criticized For documentary magazines.
“It’s nauseating to see my language and the hometowns of people in my community used as the backdrop for white savior trends,” she wrote. is Indiana Jones.”
She called on the festival to enable Muslims to make “films about life, not war.”
Debates over whether artists should share racial or ethnic identities and sympathies with their subjects have long been debated in the fields of literature and film – with many artists and writers such as documentaries Ken Burns Nanfu Wang argued that talking only about our culture would be suffocating, and that the challenge was to live in a world different from ours.
In the case of “Jihad Rehab,” the critique of identity is Acting as political art, it must examine the historical and cultural oppression that led to the imprisonment of these men at Guantánamo.
Some critics and documentary filmmakers say The Mandate is reductive and insensitive.
“What struck me about ‘Jihad Rehabilitation’ is that it allowed viewers to make their own decisions,” said Chris Metzler, who helped select the films for the San Francisco Documentary Festival. rice field. “I didn’t see the propaganda.”
Smaker has other advocates. Los Angeles Times television critic Lorraine Ali is Muslim, I have written The film, he said, “is a human journey through a complex emotional process of self-assessment and accountability, and examines the devastating impact of US and Saudi policy flaws.”
She is disappointed in Sundance.
“There’s a lot of weaponization of identity politics in the independent film world,” Ali said in an interview. “The film shaped them by struggling to understand the culture of where they came from. It would be a shame to throw away a film that many people want to see,” he said.
From firefighter to filmmaker
Smaker was a 21-year-old firefighter in California when a plane crashed into the World Trade Center buildings on September 11th.
Looking for answers, she hitchhiked through Afghanistan and settled in the ancient city of Sanah, Yemen, for half a year, where she learned Arabic and taught firefighting. , I turned to the Mohammed Bin Nayef Counseling and Care Center in Riyadh, where my Yemeni friend was talking about.
The Saudi monarchy is largely unchallenged. The center, which attempts to rehabilitate accused terrorists, is an unlikely distance between a prison and a boutique hotel. It has a gym and pool, and teachers offering art therapy and lectures on the true meaning of ‘jihad’, including Islam, Freud, and personal struggles.
Thus, the documentary’s original title, Jihad Rehabilitation, provoked a great deal of criticism, even from supporters who saw it as too simplistic. said Ali, a critic for the Los Angeles Times.
To address such concerns, the director recently renamed the film “The UnRedacted.”
The United States sent 137 detainees from Guantanamo Bay to the center, which human rights groups cannot visit.
However, reporters from The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Atlantic and others interviewed prisoners.
Mr. Smaker stayed for more than a year to investigate what leads men to support groups such as al-Qaeda and the Taliban.
Saudi authorities made her talk to 150 detainees, most of whom shook her off. She found four men who spoke to her.
These conversations are at the heart of the film and go much deeper than previous news reports. That didn’t deter critics. The giant of the documentary world, Disney, has taken up the point raised by the film’s opponents. “People are not free to agree to anything in a confinement system, especially in a notoriously violent dictatorship,” she wrote.
This is a controversial proposal. Journalists often interview prisoners, and documentaries like “The Thin Blue Line” give them a powerful voice, but don’t necessarily clear this purist hurdle of free consent.
Disney declined an interview request and said it wished Smaker the best of luck.
Lawrence Wright wrote the Pulitzer Prize-winning book The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11 and spent a lot of time in Saudi Arabia. he saw a documentary
“As a reporter, you acknowledged the restrictions on prisoners, and Smaker could have acknowledged that with greater emphasis,” he said. “But she was exploring the big mystery. She’s understanding people who might have done horrible things. This doesn’t hurt that her efforts.”
Gaining intimate access is a coup, he added.
Smaker envisioned the film as a development that begins with the accusations of Americans as bomb makers, bin Laden drivers, and Taliban fighters, then peels back layers to find the humans.
Distrust gave way to trust. The man explained that he was drawn to al Qaeda out of boredom, poverty and advocacy for Islam. What emerged was a portrait of a middle-aged man looking back on the past.
Smaker asked one of the men, “Are you a terrorist?”
he put on the reins. “Someone fights me, I fight them. Why do you call me a terrorist?”
Her critics claim that such questions were recorded as accusations.
San Francisco Festival’s Metzler said the documentary should ask the question on the viewer’s mind.
In fact, the film focuses on the torture inflicted by Americans at Guantanamo Bay. Ali al-Raimi arrived when he was 16 years old.
he tried to hang himself.
“There was nothing worse than Guantanamo,” he said.
Men longed for mundane things: marriage, children, and jobs. A talkative man, Khalid trained as a bomb maker. In the film, he said he is currently making remote-controlled car alarms in Jeddah. Ambiguity remains.
success, abort
Sundance announced in December that it had selected “Jihad Rehabilitation” for its 2022 festival, which will take place the following month. Critics erupted.
“The all-white team behind a film about Yemeni and South Arabian men,” said filmmaker Violeta Ayala. wrote in a tweet.
Smaker’s film had a Yemeni-American executive producer and a Saudi co-producer.
Over 230 filmmakers have signed a letter condemning the documentary. The majority had never seen it. The letter notes that the Sundance Film Festival has programmed 76 of his films about Muslims and the Middle East over his 20-plus years, of which only 35% have been directed by Muslim or Arab filmmakers. It was pointed out that
The Sundance Film Festival noted that of the 152 films whose directors have revealed their ethnicity at the 2022 festival, 7% are of Middle Eastern descent. Estimates put him at 1.5-3% of Arab Americans.
Sundance officials backtracked. Tabitha Jackson, the festival’s director at the time, demanded to see written consent from the detainees and Smaker’s plans to protect them once the film was shown, according to an email shown to The Times. Ms. Jackson also requested an ethics review of the plan and gave Ms. Smaker her four days. Attempts to contact Mr. Jackson were unsuccessful.
The review concluded that Smaker has more than met safety standards.
Smaker said the public relations firm encouraged her to apologize. “What did I apologize for?” she said. “Is it because I believe my audience will decide for themselves?”
A prominent documentary executive said the Sundance Film Festival’s request was unprecedented.
An executive who has run a large festival has emailed the Sundance Film Festival warning that Smaker’s demands may encourage protesters. Before handing out invitations, executives asked, “How many times, three times, four times the headwind,” writes the festival.
The executive had previously invited Smaker to screen “Jihad Rehabilitation,” but declined because her film had not yet been completed. The executive requested anonymity out of fear of offending the Muslim filmmakers.
“Jihad Rehabilitation” will premiere in January. Most major reviews were good. But Mr. Smaker’s critics were not persuaded.
“When I, a Muslim woman, say there is something wrong with this movie, I have written Jude Chehab, a Lebanese-American documentarian, said, “My voice should be stronger than a white woman who says it’s not point blank.”
Former champion Disney wrote:
Her apology and Sundance’s apology shook the industry. South by Southwest and San Francisco festivals withdrew invitations.
Jihad Turk, the former imam of the largest mosque in Los Angeles, was perplexed. In December, Abigail’s brother and friend Tim Disney invited him to a screening.
“My first instinct was, ‘Oh, it’s not another movie about Jihad and Islam,'” he said. Then I saw, and it was introspective and intelligent. ”
elusive happy ending
In June, Smaker had another screening — at New Zealand’s Doc Edge festival.
Scared, she jumped on a plane to Oakland. Will this end in cancellation? At a loss for words, Toronto film critic Mullen said, tweeted a warning.
“Oh Wild. The controversial Sundance documentary Jihad Rehabilitation has surfaced,” he wrote, adding: File under “We warned you!” ”
New Zealand festival head Dan Shannan shrugged.
“What happened at Sundance wasn’t good,” he said. “Film festivals must retain faith in their role.”
Smaker ran out of credit cards and borrowed money from his parents when he was 42. This is not her dream Sundance debut. “I have no money or influence to fight this,” she said, brushing her hair. “I’m not sure if I can see a way out.”