Word: films
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Dates: during 2010-2019
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...main focuses of the Berlin Film Festival, which runs through Feb. 21, is always the celebrities who've jetted into the frosty German capital for the festivities. Leonardo diCaprio, the star of Martin Scorsese's psychological thriller, Shutter Island, was the talk of town after being spotted at the Grill Royal, one of Berlin's top restaurants. Ewan McGregor hit the red carpet to plug his new film, The Ghost Writer, and Renée Zellweger is sitting on the festival jury. Director Roman Polanski was conspicuous by his absence. (He's still under house arrest in Switzerland on rape...
...star" of the film is the former bin Laden bodyguard, Abu Jandal, a jovial, extroverted taxi driver now living in Yemen. After working for bin Laden in Afghanistan in the 1990s, Jandal moved back to Yemen, where he was arrested by authorities in connection with the bombing of the USS Cole in October 2000. He was briefly jailed and then made a deal with the Yemeni government to take part in the government's "reintegration" program, trying to persuade young Islamists to give up violence for education. Following the 9/11 attacks, Jandal was interrogated by FBI officials and became...
...late 2001 and sent to Guantanamo Bay, where he was held for seven years. He was released last January and returned to Yemen. "I wanted to look at two people who worked for bin Laden - one who was low-level, Hamdan, [and] the other [who] was much closer," the film's New York-based director, Laura Poitras, tells TIME. (See the 100 best movies of all time...
...Poitras says she set out to make a film about Guantanamo detainees returning to Yemen after being released by the U.S. government, but switched her focus when a Yemeni reporter introduced her to Jandal. The former bodyguard seems like a contradiction in the film: in one scene, he describes how he was shocked to hear about the 9/11 attacks, but in another, he reveals that he had met many of the hijackers in Afghanistan while he was working for bin Laden. He also says he feels responsible and guilty for the imprisonment of his brother-in-law, who does...
...trying to communicate rather than use guns," says Poitras. "I wanted to show how people are drawn to Abu Jandal by his psychology and charisma. At a practical level, he's telling younger people not to fight and instead get an education." (See pictures from the 2009 Cannes Film Festival...