ATTENTION
That showtime has passed. Please try next available showtime.
USA, 2007, 95 Minute Running Time Genre/Subjects: Documentary, Drama, Educational, Political, Social Issues Program: Documentary FilmsLanguage: English
DIRECTOR: Nina Davenport Producer: Nina Davenport, David Schisgall Editor: Nina Davenport, Aaron Kuhn Screenwriter: Nina DavenportCinematographer: Nina Davenport Principal Cast: Alberto Bonilla, Steven Chinni, Liev Schreiber
In this strikingly complex documentary – by turns heartrending and wry – director Nina Davenport exposes the narcissism inherent in liberal guilt via the role she herself plays in the story of a subject who doesn't quite resemble her naively preconceived model of sympathy and inspiration. Muthana Mohmed is a middle-class Iraqi film student whose school has been bombed out in the war. After seeing a profile of Mohmed on MTV, actor-director Liev Schreiber hires him to serve as an intern on the Prague set of the upcoming production Everything Is Illuminated. Davenport is invited along to record for posterity one of the U.S. invasion's rare positive consequences. But the young man himself complicates the picture. For one thing, he has high praise for the president who sent troops to his country. For another, he balks at his menial duties: Mohmed doesn't want to make copies or prepare snacks for the talent, he wants to make films. But he botches his one big task – and after clashing with him over expectations and obligations, his benefactors lose patience. The film crew moves on, while Mohmed remains in Prague – along with Davenport. And thus ensues the power struggle between subject and filmmaker – even as the latter herself begins to struggle with the blurring of the line between observation and participation. At first seeking to oblige his demands for a visa and monetary compensation, Davenport enters into ever more tense relations with Mohmed – until what was expected to be a heartwarming tale of international goodwill morphs into an incriminating self-portrait in which she symbolizes the United States itself in its failure to extricate itself from, never mind clean up, the Iraqi quagmire. In person – Nina Davenport In cooperation with The Documentary Cinema Institute