MCN e.V. MOVIE NIGHT Wed./Mi.8.8.12 20:30
Baghdad, September 2003: In a middle class house on a quiet street, a family is fast asleep. Without warning, the front door is crashed and American soldiers storm the house looking for weapons and bomb-making material. Cameraman Michael Tucker documents the event as the men in the house are cuffed and forced to kneel
in the garden. A search of the
house uncovers no incriminating evidence, however Yunis Khatayer Abbas
and three of his brothers are taken and detained. Bent on
forcing Yunis to confess to crimes he did not commit, his captors press
him with bizarre questions about music tastes, sexual preferences and
Harrison Ford. His intelligence value exhausted, he is then transferred
to Abu Ghraib Prison. The charge: Planning the Assassination of Tony
Blair. Among thousands suffering from food shortages, riots and
insurgent attacks, Yunis endures by helping his fellow prisoners and
keeping a secret diary. He also forges an unlikely friendship with one
of his guards, who he calls "The Good Soldier".
While imprisoned, Yunis befriended one of
the guards, Army Specialist Benjamin Thompson, who he calls "the good
soldier." Thompson, unlike so many other American military personnel
Yunis had encountered, dared to treat him like a human being. He
realized early on in his tour of duty at Abu Ghraib that the conditions
in Camp Ganci (the section of Abu Ghraib where prisoners with "no
intelligence value" were held and Yunis was interned) were inhumane.
Thompson, along with other members of his MP company, did their best to
improve conditions in the camp and to respond to the humanitarian needs
of the prisoners. After finishing his tour and returning to America,
Thompson often "googled" his friend Yunis' name curious to find out what
had happened to him. Eventually he discovered that Yunis was the
subject of a film project. He contacted the filmmakers and agreed to
participate.
Combining Tucker's embedded footage, Yunis'
home movies, testimony from former guard Benjamin Thompson and original
comic book art, Tucker and Epperlein trace the moving story of an
ordinary man trapped in a Kafkaesque nightmare.
Artikel aus der Rheinpfalz vom 3.8.12
