muthana mohmed
In 2004, a year after the US invasion of Iraq, actor Liev Schreiber saw an MTV segment about a Baghdad film student named Muthana Mohmed, whose studies had literally been bombed out from under him. [1]
Operation Filmmaker is a documentary about Muthana Mohmed, a young Iraqi who caught the eye of American actor Liev Schreiber. [2]
Documentarian Nina Davenport signed on to chronicle the experiences of a young Iraqi, Muthana Mohmed, whom Liev Schreiber hired to work on his feature, Everything Is Illuminated, shot in Prague in 2003. [3]
In 2004, just one year after the United States launched a devastating attack on Baghdad, MTV ran a story about a 25-year-old Iraqi film student named Muthana Mohmed, who remained determined not to let the strife that consumed his country consume his dreams as well. [4]
Schreiber had seen an MTV report about Mohmed, a charming 25 year old who said he just wanted to make films, but was stuck in war torn Baghdad, where his film school had been bombed and he was afraid to leave his family’s home. [3]
“Operation Filmmaker,” the sad, funny, obsessively watchable/avert-your-eyes documentary opening today, doesn’t just illustrate the truth of the saying “No good deed goes unpunished.” [1]
But what’s particularly fascinating about Operation Filmmaker is the way in which it examines the documentary filmmaker’s relationship to the film’s subject and the role the documentary filmmaker plays in shaping the film’s subjects’ future. [3]
In addition, an independent documentary team headed by filmmaker Nina Davenport followed the young Iraqi around, hoping for a story to emerge. [1]
In the wake of “Operation Iraqi Freedom”, American actor Liev Schreiber had an idealistic notion - to rescue an Iraqi film student from the rubble of his country and bring him to the West to intern on a Hollywood movie (Everything Is Illuminated). [5]
Schreiber invited Mohmed to work as an intern on his new film - and he invited documentary filmmaker Nina Davenport to make her own movie about Mohmed’s experience. [2]
Touched by the plight of an aspiring Iraqi filmmaker whose dreams of working in Hollywood seemed to fall with Baghdad, American filmmaker Liev Schreiber invites the ambitious wannabe director to intern on Everything Is Illuminated, to unexpected results. [4]
Director Nina Davenport becomes personally involved in Schreiber’s charitable effort, and soon finds herself embroiled in a complex moral quagmire and all-consuming power struggle between filmmaker and subject. [5]
In broad terms, Davenport directs our attention towards what happens when well-intended but naive Americans venture to solve a political or cultural problem about which they know very little. [3]
Schreiber was heading to the Czech Republic to make his film-directing debut, an adaptation of the novel “Everything Is Illuminated” starring Elijah Wood, and he convinced his producer Peter Saraf to hire Mohmed as an intern for the duration of the shoot. [1]
(Information collected by NPR will be used solely for internal NPR or NPR member station purposes and only if you selected ‘yes’ above. [2]
Sources:
[1] A culture clash writ small, messy, and real - The Boston Globe
[2] Documentary Sheds Light on Young Iraqi : NPR
[3] Operation Filmmaker - Movie Review of Operation Filmmaker - 2008
[4] Blockbuster Online - Person Detail Information Page
[5] Operation Filmmaker Movie - Muthana Mohmed - Empire Movies