NYT: Sundance Liked Her Documentary on Terrorism, Until Muslim Critics Didn’t

[Mister Mets]

The New York Times has a piece about pushback against a documentary on a Saudi rehabilitation center for accused terrorists.

Sundance Liked Her Documentary on Terrorism, Until Muslim Critics Didn’t
The film festival gave Meg Smaker’s “Jihad Rehab” a coveted spot in its 2022 lineup, but apologized after an outcry over her race and her approach.

Meg Smaker felt exhilarated last November. After 16 months filming inside a Saudi rehabilitation center for accused terrorists, she learned that her documentary “Jihad Rehab” was invited to the 2022 Sundance Festival, one of the most prestigious showcases in the world.

Her documentary centered on four former Guantánamo detainees sent to a rehab center in Saudi Arabia who had opened their lives to her, speaking of youthful attraction to Al Qaeda and the Taliban, of torture endured, and of regrets.

Film critics warned that conservatives might bridle at these human portraits, but reviews after the festival’s screening were strong.

“The absence of absolutes is what’s most enriching,” The Guardian stated, adding, “This is a movie for intelligent people looking to have their preconceived notions challenged.” Variety wrote: The film “feels like a miracle and an interrogative act of defiance.”

But attacks would come from the left, not the right. Arab and Muslim filmmakers and their white supporters accused Ms. Smaker of Islamophobia and American propaganda. Some suggested her race was disqualifying, a white woman who presumed to tell the story of Arab men.

Sundance leaders reversed themselves and apologized.

Abigail Disney, a grandniece of Walt Disney, had been the executive producer of “Jihad Rehab” and called it “freaking brilliant” in an email to Ms. Smaker. Now she disavowed it.

The film “landed like a truckload of hate,” Ms. Disney wrote in an open letter.

Ms. Smaker’s film has become near untouchable, unable to reach audiences. Prominent festivals rescinded invitations, and critics in the documentary world took to social media and pressured investors, advisers and even her friends to withdraw names from the credits. She is close to broke.

“In my naïveté, I kept thinking people would get the anger out of their system and realize this film was not what they said,” Ms. Smaker said. “I’m trying to tell an authentic story that a lot of Americans might not have heard.”

Battles over authorship and identity regularly roil the documentary world, a tightly knit and largely left-wing ecosystem.

This is a dumb fight for the cultural left, right?

[Username taken]

The New York Times has a piece about pushback against a documentary on a Saudi rehabilitation center for accused terrorists.



This is a dumb fight for the cultural left, right?

I cant read the article. I dont have a subscription.

[caj]

"Don't like anything until EVERY liberal group gives their thumbs up"

My eyes can't roll enough. For Pete's sake, you're never going to please everyone. If it's good, it's good. If it's bad, it's bad. Stop pandering to all the races and liberal groups.

[Tofali]

If critique made the whole project crumble then it tells me it isn't that strong a piece and It's unfortunate for the filmmaker but I can see why distributors would not want to be attached to something that would generate a lot of negative headlines.

[Pinsir]

From my experience, the Muslim community is very defensive about how they are treated in media, understandable since most of the time they are depicted as terrorists. Like, I remember reading in grad school a book called Our Bodies Belong to God, which is about a particular hesitancy in Egyptian culture about organ donation. One of my comrades objected to the content of the book and it became obvious the reason why is because it betrayed "Muslims" as being overtly superstitious or backwards even. The author was also an Egyptian Muslim.

[j9ac9k]

"Don't like anything until EVERY liberal group gives their thumbs up"

My eyes can't roll enough. For Pete's sake, you're never going to please everyone. If it's good, it's good. If it's bad, it's bad. Stop pandering to all the races and liberal groups.

Being "liberal" or "progressive" etc. is a difficult and problematic course to navigate because the principle they aim towards is to try to respect everyone's culture and voice. Liberals also tend to be more open-minded (yes, I know - not all) and are willing to accept new information/perspectives. Understanding is a work in progress, and it can be very messy, (i.e. cancel culture) but most conservatives seem to think they already know all they need to know. Conservatives who find it easier to believe in absolutes may scoff, but there's a reason they're almost always on the wrong side of history.

Huge generalizations, of course but it seems to me liberals are aiming towards a better future with the understanding that we are far from it, while conservatives hold on to the false narrative that things were already perfect (or at least "great") and liberal are messing it up. (when really, they are finally able to advance their own narratives, outside the long-accepted mainstream pov)

Regarding this film, I think it should be a starting point for a conversation, rather than a condemnation of the filmmaker if her intentions were not malicious. (which they don't appear to be) Everyone, on all sides would benefit from talking rather than condemning, but we've created an internalized McCarthyism (both left and right here in the U.S.) where it's safer to avoid even the appearance of sympathizing with the "other side."

[WebLurker]

Never heard of the movie until now. Looking online, it seems to be a literal "he said, she said" in regards to whether the movie is truly problematic or not.

[thwhtGuardian]

It's kind of hard to know if they made the right decision without seeing anything about the film. I have to say though, that it isn't getting screened anywhere leads me to believe that it might not have been very good to begin with.

[Kirby101]

Rather than take Met's embrace of Powells crusade against "cancel culture" as if there is just one side to this. Let's see what a critic from the Muslim world has to say.

https://www.documentary.org/online-f...se-jihad-rehab

From the very first frame, it is not empathy, but a clear presumption of guilt that imbues the film. I was immediately struck by the filmmaker’s voice, not dissimilar to a military interrogator, as she cross-examines the film’s participants with leading questions, asking again and again about their alleged crimes and attempting to goad them into confessions. She identifies the men in the film with text on screen that emulates a “rap sheet” (the filmmaker’s words), effectively condemning these former child-soldiers—all of whom maintain their innocence throughout the film and their near 20 years of imprisonment—as terrorists. In one scene, a participant is out on a probationary period from the “rehab” prison, and pointedly asks the filmmaker not to film him because of potential endangerment. She callously does so anyway and dramatically scores the scene for the audience’s benefit. Two of the four Yemeni men she features ask her explicitly to stop filming them, visibly disturbed by the filmmaker's patronizing posture. The basic duty of care and ethical responsibility a documentarian is expected to have with their participants is dangerously lacking.

[Tofali]

I gave the filmmaker a little benefit of the doubt but I've none now.

[Mister Mets]

If critique made the whole project crumble then it tells me it isn't that strong a piece and It's unfortunate for the filmmaker but I can see why distributors would not want to be attached to something that would generate a lot of negative headlines.

This is messy on a few levels, and it's an interesting question of how much quality matters.

It's a problem if certain types of movies have to be better in order to avoid massive pushback. That's going to shape decisions about what types of movies to make and support, and in some cases, it's going to mean less movies about certain topics.
Quality won't necessarily be enough to avoid serious pushback. William Randolph Hearst was able to keep people from seeing Citizen Kane the first time that was out in theaters.
This isn't about bad headlines either. Bad headlines suggests that it'll upset the public, but this is more about the preferences of gatekeepers within a particular cultural ecosystem.

[Kirby101]

Citizen Kane?!

[thwhtGuardian]

This is messy on a few levels, and it's an interesting question of how much quality matters.

It's a problem if certain types of movies have to be better in order to avoid massive pushback. That's going to shape decisions about what types of movies to make and support, and in some cases, it's going to mean less movies about certain topics.
Quality won't necessarily be enough to avoid serious pushback. William Randolph Hearst was able to keep people from seeing Citizen Kane the first time that was out in theaters.
This isn't about bad headlines either. Bad headlines suggests that it'll upset the public, but this is more about the preferences of gatekeepers within a particular cultural ecosystem.

That's only true if you think the media is some all powerful cabal...otherwise if a film is good it will be shown no matter the pushback. If it's not particularly good, and it's controversial then the market will decide and it seems like that's what's happening.

[Pinsir]

Rather than take Met's embrace of Powells crusade against "cancel culture" as if there is just one side to this. Let's see what a critic from the Muslim world has to say.

https://www.documentary.org/online-f...se-jihad-rehab

It's a better critique, but the author uses the terms like Muslim, Middle Eastern, Arab interchangeably with shocking sloppiness. If you want to talk about Muslim film makers, talk about Muslim film makers, don't use a geographic terms like MENA to mean Muslim because then you are actively erasing non-Muslims and it is kind of weird to talk about diversity and inclusion when you do that. Like this paragraph here has some weird issues;

Though it’s unsurprising that these stereotypical narratives continue to proliferate two whole decades after the “War on Terror” began, what is astounding is that this film was given a platform by the Sundance Film Festival. Disturbed by this, a group of Muslim and Arab filmmakers got together and started organizing; we surveyed the past 20 years of publicly available documentary programming at Sundance and found that they had programmed a total of 76 films in the US and World Documentary Competitions about people that are Muslim, people from the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) or films set in the MENA region. Less than 35% of these films were directed by Muslim or MENA filmmakers, and when it comes to films about the wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria—the predominant lens through which Muslims and Arabs have been depicted in documentary—a staggering 75% of these films were made by non-Muslim or non-MENA filmmakers.

Should be noted here that the source for this data isn't provided so I can't delve further into who is being counted.

[John Venus]

Without having seen the movie, it's hard to say anything about who's right or wrong here.