This is a quite amazing film. The director has persuaded Al Jazeera to allow her access to their control room in Dohar, Qatar throughout the Iraq War. She does not appear herself but uses the words of the Al Jazeera staff, the Americans and other journalists to present by far the most balanced picture of the war I have yet seen.
Al Jazeera is under attack from all sides - from reactionary Arab states and from the Americans - because they show the facts of war rather than the distorted picture that the protagonists want to portray. The Al Jazeera staff are Arabs and so are obviously pro-Arab - but they try desperately hard to be as objective as they can, despite condemnation from the meretricious Rumsfeld, contrasted very effectively with a young, decent American army press officer. The film is low key most of the time - and all the better for that. But there is real tragedy when the Al Jazeera Baghdad office is bombed by the Americans and you share with the staff their frustration when they can no longer report from the front line. The familiar highlights of the war are looked at with fresh eyes, and given a new twist, making the post-film events in Iraq seem far more likely than we in the West expected after the capture of Baghdad. An outstanding documentary.
Al Jazeera is under attack from all sides - from reactionary Arab states and from the Americans - because they show the facts of war rather than the distorted picture that the protagonists want to portray. The Al Jazeera staff are Arabs and so are obviously pro-Arab - but they try desperately hard to be as objective as they can, despite condemnation from the meretricious Rumsfeld, contrasted very effectively with a young, decent American army press officer. The film is low key most of the time - and all the better for that. But there is real tragedy when the Al Jazeera Baghdad office is bombed by the Americans and you share with the staff their frustration when they can no longer report from the front line. The familiar highlights of the war are looked at with fresh eyes, and given a new twist, making the post-film events in Iraq seem far more likely than we in the West expected after the capture of Baghdad. An outstanding documentary.