Director Meg Smaker’s feature debut, the intense documentary “The UnRedacted” (formerly known as “Jihad Rehab”), chronicles the plight of Guantánamo detainees undergoing a long-term de-radicalization program in Saudi Arabia.
Speaking with “The Perfect Storm” author Sebastian Junger in a lively awards season Q&A at New York City’s Village East Cinema on September 6, Smaker explained that his desire to tell the stories of these arrests came after experiencing a change in attitudes. from his fellow firefighters after 9/11.
“Before 9/11, my firehouse was a place of love, support and family, and the next day it became a place of hate, anger and bigotry,” says Smaker. “And nothing that I saw in the mainstream media answered any of the questions generated during the day. The only way I could think of that was to go to Afghanistan on my own.”
When Smaker delved into the film’s jihadist themes, he uncovered layers that most American stories tend to miss. “The US national narrative is ‘these men are all psychopaths, and this is a violent religion and they hate us,’” Smaker said. “Spending three years with them, I realized that there is a complexity and nuance to real life.”
Smaker revealed that the trip taught him immeasurable lessons about making assumptions, one of which is that American culture, ironically, is firmly embedded in the consciousness of detainees, in surprising and unexpected ways.
“There is a line in the movie where [one of the men] says: ‘I don’t have a job, I don’t have money’. That’s from the movie ‘Friday,’ and they saw this movie in Guanatanamo,” explained Smaker. “My favorite scene that we had to cut was the story of how [detainee] Ali learned English. When he went to Guantanamo he was 16 years old, he was a kid. During the Bush administration, they were not allowed to watch television or have contact with family, and Obama changed all that. And Ali told me how he learned English by playing “Grand Theft Auto”. There are missions that arise [in the game] and stopped and translated the mission. Those kinds of stories are interesting to me because nothing is just one thing.”
See the full interview here or in the video below.
There will be an additional Guild Member Screening of “The UnRedacted” as part of TheWrap Screening Series in Los Angeles on Saturday, December 10 at 1:00 pm at The Crescent Theatre, 100 N. Crescent Drive, Beverly Hills, CA 90210, that you can RSVP to https://theunredactedjihadrehab-la.splashthat.com/