Arpa Film Festival 2015 interviews with film directors
The fundamental focus was to truthfully reveal a humanistic story, while the overall approach was collaboration over reportage for documentary film co-directors, Saeed Taji Farouky and Michael McEvoy, of Tell Spring Not to Come This Year. This documentary is based in Afghanistan, in the highly volatile Helmand Province, after NATO troops withdrew and left the Afghanistan National Army (ANA) to fight the ever growing Taliban on their own.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row type=”in_container” bg_position=”left top” bg_repeat=”no-repeat” scene_position=”center” text_color=”dark” text_align=”left”][vc_column width=”1/1″][vc_column_text]
Michael McEvoy was a former British Army liaison with Afghan forces stationed in Helmand. He had developed close relationships with ANA soldiers and after his deployment, he returned to Helmand to document a perspective that was not readily shown in Western media.
Saeed Taji Farouky is an award winning feature documentary filmmaker and a TED Senior Fellow. His independent documentary film company, Tourist With A Typewriter, focuses on telling stories that are challenging, immersive, and humanistic.
Swainson interviewed nearly all of the 2015 Arpa Film Festival slate of film directors and asked them the same six questions as below.
Why did you choose to make your film?
MCEVOY: As a former military advisor to Afghanistan forces in Helmand with the British Army, I spent a lot of time with Afghan forces, speaking their language, and forming a strong bond. Towards the end of my deployment I observed how the mainstream Western media’s view primarily objectified the Afghan forces. The Western journalist would go to Afghanistan and most of the stories would cover Western troops and when they talked about Afghan forces it would primarily be about “green on blue” attacks (the insider attacks when Afghan forces would attack their Western trainers). These were rare occasions and these stories made the headlines. It was not the only story to be told at the time. Towards the end of my tour, I felt this was an untold story and that it needed to be told. I wanted to humanize the Afghan forces who were a part of the exit strategy and would still be fighting the war.
I have never made a documentary film, and I thought the documentary format was the best way to get that point across. I really wanted to make a humanist film, not a political film. And I liked that people have diverse feelings after watching the film.
FAROUKY: The film was initially Mike’s idea. From my perspective, I take a very long time to choose the subjects of my films. I usually try to find the major, generation-defining events and tell that story from a different viewpoint. It’s a perspective we don’t see in mainstream news and documentaries. I had wanted to make a film about Afghanistan since I started making documentaries in 2004, but I could never find the story. I don’t make films about ideas, or subjects, I make films about people, so it was important for me to find people I could work with. But I couldn’t find the right people who could offer a new perspective on the war and challenge the overwhelming majority of media that was coming out of Afghanistan about the foreign troops, rather than the Afghans themselves. Then in the beginning of 2013, Mike approached me through a mutual friend with the idea of the film, and I knew immediately it would be a powerful story.
Name a moment during shooting that made you proud.
MCEVOY: Feeling integrated and accepted into the group that we lived with. I had known them before when I was in the army. Our piece is subjective, from the perspective of the soldiers. There were ethical moments where I had to be a human being and help them when they were injured, because they did not know how to medically take care of themselves. I did perform first aid on soldiers, then went back to being a director and focusing on the film. I’m human not a cold journalist. However I would not help them when asked to take a weapon and help fight the Taliban. I would tell them that that’s not my job anymore and, eventually, they understood.
FAROUKY: Proud? This is quite difficult to say. I almost never feel proud when I’m filming. Sometimes I feel proud once I’ve made the film, and I’m happy with it. But not during filming. For me the most important thing was that when we finally showed the film to Afghans, many of them being military people, they like it. They were moved, they laughed, they cried, and they felt it was a genuine, authentic story about their country.
Was there a moment that became a creative breakthrough while making your film?
MCEVOY: The creative idea came when I was still in the army and working with the guys. I didn’t have an idea of what we wanted the story to be. Saeed and I kept it that way on purpose. We took a observational approach. The big creative decisions came in the editing room, getting these guys’ perspectives across, showing a humanist story, and the complexity of their present world.
FAROUKY: I’d say the moment that became a breakthrough for me was when we were filming the unit confronting the Afghan Local Police. The army went into a police checkpoint and threatened the police, telling them if they didn’t stop firing at the army the unit would come back and kill them all. That moment was a real eye-opener for me. It gave me an incredibly vivid glimpse into the complexities of the war in Afghanistan, and that even two groups that should be on the same side were threatening each other. It made me understand that the line between “good guy” and “bad guy” wasn’t simple in this war. That scene was a breakthrough for us, because it made us understand that we had to make a film that included all the complexities, the moral grey-areas, and the messy parts of the war. Anything that was obvious or that we’d seen in other films about Afghanistan, we decided not to include. Instead we focused on these small moments that give the viewer an idea of the mess that’s left behind in Afghanistan. And most importantly, we tried to portray these events from the perspective of the people in them.
During the creative process, was there a moment when you let go of certainties and just ran with it, allowing creativity to do its thing?
MCEVOY: From day one to the end of filming.
FAROUKY: We were filming in probably one of the most unpredictable situations in the world, on the front line of a messy war, so there was almost never any certainty. We had to give up certainty very early on and just commit to the story. It was a big gamble because if it didn’t work out, we had no film. We couldn’t compromise and make a different story or alter the ambitions of the film slightly. It was all or nothing. This is one of the reasons we didn’t get any money from film institutions or grants, they’re not willing to take that kind of risk any more. We were also almost wholly dependent on the military. For example, we couldn’t go anywhere outside the base on our own, so there were no alternative story lines we could have pursued. We just lived with the two people we filmed, and whatever they did, we did. They were our guides through their world, and that way they were also finally able to take ownership of and tell their own stories of the war. After 14 years of other people telling stories of foreign soldiers in their country, we felt it was time for the Afghans to have their own narrative.
Since an artist is truly never finished, is there anything that you would like to do differently or add to your film?
MCEVOY: There are about eight additional scenes that I think are fascinating, but at the end of the day we had to cut a lot of stuff. There was a scene about the elections in Afghanistan and I wanted to give viewers a since of what it was like to be in Afghanistan at the time. We had to cut it because the film would have been to long. I believe that if you want to create a strong and powerful film, you have to keep it simple and not include a bunch of complex issues.
However I am very happy with the balance Saeed and I were able to maintain. There are impressionistic moments in the film that are grounded with some explanation, so people will be connected to the message. Saaed is more impressionistic and I’m more grounded, wanting clarity. So he pushed for more impressionistic moments and I pushed for more clarity.
FAROUKY: There are always things I want to change every time I watch the film (and I watch it a lot). I watch nearly every screening when I’m invited to festivals too. But mostly the changes are small editing decisions: make this scene shorter, make this shot longer, etc. But there’s nothing fundamental I can say I would have wanted to change about the film. But of course there was no shortage of people telling us to do it differently. We had a lot of people telling us to make the film more conventional when we were looking for funding or broadcasters. They encouraged us to just remake the same sensationalist, simplistic films that were being produced about the war. That would have been pointless because that would have defeated the entire reason for making the film. I would never risk my life to make a film that looked like thousands of other films, that anyone else could have made.
What does it mean to you to have your film selected by the Arpa International Film Festival?
MCEVOY: It awesome! It’s an amazing feeling.
FAROUKY: I’m always very interested in screening the film in the US. In many ways Afghanistan was America’s war, so I want to know what Americans think of the film. Personally, I was against the war from the very moment it started, but I think the film can be read in many different ways by different audiences. So I’m always very curious to see how the U.S. audiences read it. Also screening the film in Los Angeles is very important for me, because so much of what I wanted to do was challenge the mainstream war film narrative that was virtually invented in Hollywood. Anything that looked familiar in terms of fiction war films, anything that was exciting, sexy, classically dramatic we cut, and left only the mess, confusion and chaos. So it’s essentially an anti-Hollywood, anti-war film. And because I’m half-Egyptian I like the sound of screening in the Egyptian Theatre!
Written by Sharon Swainson
Communications & Content Development
2015 Arpa International Film Festival[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]