On Friday 22 January 2016, a panel joined a packed audience at the Frontline Club for a lively discussion following the London premiere screening of Michelle Shephard‘s Guantanamo’s Child. With unprecedented access to former fellow prisoners, family members and government officials, the documentary explores the political and ethical implications of the harrowing case of Omar Khadr.

Richard Gizbert, presenter of The Listening Post on Al Jazeera English, moderated the discussion. The panel was comprised of investigative reporter and filmmaker, Michelle Shephard; former Guantanamo Bay prisoner and director of outreach at CAGE, Moazzam Begg; and Cori Crider, head of the Abuses in Counter-Terrorism team at Reprieve.

“All the best work that comes out of Guantanamo either has her name or Karen Rosenberg’s on it,” Gizbert began, praising Shephard‘s substantial journalistic achievements in investigating Camp Gitmo over the past decade.

Still buzzing from tonight’s event at @frontlineclub – the film and discussion after were brilliant #mustseefilm pic.twitter.com/lItRso6GXE

— Camilla Pallesen (@CMPallesen) January 22, 2016

Shephard began by elaborating on her experiences and knowledge of Guantanamo Bay, broadly explaining why certain people were imprisoned and others were not. “What decided how you were dealt with and when you were released from Guantanamo was not the merits or demerits of your case, but what passport you held (…) Guantanamo was never created as a place to try for war crimes. It was created as an intelligence gathering unit.”

Gizbert then asked Begg if the film fell short of capturing the difficult times experienced during his imprisonment. He responded: “There is a part of the story you will never get to see. For example, the conversations I had with my lawyer while at Guantanamo were classified. When I left, I asked for the notes of these meetings and they told me I can’t have them because they are classified.”

Referring to the strict rules that journalists experience when covering Guantanamo, Begg continued: “When you can’t film a person’s face, when you can’t show what he looks like, what his expressions are, and how he feels, it takes away from the humanity of the situation.”

Crider picked up on this point and expressed her respect for lawyer Dennis Edney. He features heavily in the documentary as Khadr’s lawyer, and his role in exposing Khadr’s story has been an essential one. “So much of what the Guantanamo lawyer has to do isn’t traditional legal work in any event. They have to get these stories past the censors and into the world to convey these peoples’ humanity. I think for a solo practitioner to do something like this for Omar is absolutely extraordinary.”

Gizbert asked how important it was that a wide range of characters – such as the interrogators and military lawyer – were included in the telling and depiction of the story.

Shephard responded: “It was really essential to get all voices in [the documentary]. Omar Khadr was seen as a murderer and rapist on the extreme right, and Nelson Mandela on the extreme left. He thought he was neither. So we really wanted to break down that character, but not do it in an activist way. We wanted to get the most complete picture possible.”

Indeed, the panellists agreed that the fields of human rights and counter-terrorism are never “black and white.” This ambiguity was highlighted by Begg, who concluded the discussion with a comment on his former interrogators and prison guards at Guantanamo: “I have 15 of them on Facebook, as friends.”

For information on future screenings, please click here.

On Friday 15 May, the Frontline Club hosted the UK premiere of This Is My Land, followed by an insightful discussion with director Tamara Erde. Screened on the 67th anniversary of Israeli Independence and Nakba Day, the film poses an important and highly relevant question: how does teaching of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict affect younger generations in the contested region?

This Is My Land follows several history teachers and students in six schools over an academic year. It provides a nuanced perspective of how educational institutions across Israel and the West Bank grapple with national identity, curriculum censorship and a relentless fear of the ‘other’. Observational in style, the film reveals gaping discrepancies between concepts of freedom and historical truth, and a sense of how trauma and conflict are transmitted onto the next generation through the pages of a textbook.

At the beginning of the film, Erde explains how, as an Israeli student, she was never taught to consider Palestinian history. It was not until she joined the army that she gained greater awareness of the other side of the conflict. During her discussion at the Frontline Club, she commented on her motivations for making the film.

“For me, something that is really important and lacking in education, is the other side’s vision, narrative and history. The first step is just to realise that there is another side and story, that is today being completely ignored. It’s [about] opening up to tolerance and understanding that you are not alone in the world… to see people on the other side with their pain from the past, all this complexity.”

Thought provoking evening @frontlineclub: This is my land | Tamara Erde http://t.co/VHnxaohRFM

— Stephanie Biden (@StephanieBiden) May 15, 2015

Asked by an audience member how she had approached each school, Erde said:
“You have to get approval from the Ministry of Education for each teacher. From the Israeli side, all the teachers who were centre-left were not authorised.”

She added that while there were numerous schools from which she was denied access, the teachers she filmed were intriguing, both in their characters and the way they approached teaching.

“What I was looking for was teachers who on the one hand represent the national curriculum, but on the other hand do try to challenge themselves or ask questions within what they can do.”

Despite the complex personalities of the teachers, several audience members noted how bleak the film seemed in terms of optimism, and asked whether Erde felt any sense of hope that the two sides could find a solution.

She responded: “While editing, there were times when I thought I’d like it to have a happy ending. But at the same time, I wanted to stay loyal to what I felt and what I saw during this process… From what we’ve seen over the long years, the solution doesn’t come from politics. We need to try and bring it from other places, and I think education could have been one of the major places. But today, it’s just following politics completely.”

One audience member asked whether the film had been screened in Israel or Palestine and, given the contentious topic, the reactions it received.

Erde said: “We did some private screenings in the cinemas on the Israeli side and Ramallah… There were many good responses from teachers who saw the film and said it raised many important questions for them. On the Israeli side we did some screenings in April. There were first reactions saying, it’s okay for us to see it inside Israel but don’t show it outside so you don’t reveal anything about the problems here.”

She added that her ultimate aim would be to screen the film in schools.

“What I would have loved to do is to bring it to schools, to teachers and to kids from both sides to see. I think it will be a long process. We managed to do it in the schools that we filmed, and in some private teachers organisations. We tried through the Ministry [of Education], but I’m not surprised it didn’t work. On the Palestinian side, we are trying now and I hope it will work in some way.”

Visit the This Is My Land website for more information on the film and upcoming screenings.

By Rosie Scammell 

After nearly a decade in the making, Tears of an Afghan Warlord had its UK premiere on Friday night, with director Pascale Bourgaux on hand to tell the story behind the screen.