The Prisoner or: How I Planned to Kill Tony Blair

An expanded version of this Kafkaesque film screened today at the SXSW Film Festival. The film, a spin off from Tucker and Epperstein's earlier Iraq film, Gunner Palace, tells the story of an ordinary Iraqi arrested and held at Abu Gharib for no apparent reason. Yunnis Abbas is an articulate English-speaking Iraqi journalist - who was once imprisoned and tortured by one of Saddam's sons - is arrested during a raid one night, along with 3 of his brothers, for no apparent reason. He is interrogated and held for 9 months and then suddenly released. There is no expalnation for his detention under awful conditions in an outdoor tent complex at Abu Gharib. There is no evidence beyond a vague and unsubstantiated accusation that he is somehow involved in a plot to kill British Prime Minister Tony Blair.

The film tells a story that Americans need to hear. It is one of thousands of such human tales that occur every day in American-occupied Iraq. This story of the injustice done to a single man is a microcosm of the insane nature, brutality, and intelligence failures that have come to typify the war in Iraq. The surreal nature of American soldiers chasing shadows of terrorists is plain to see. While there have been many good films about the Iraq War, this one does an excellent job of humanizing the cost so that Americans can see the destructive and incompetent nature of the human tragedy playing out in Iraq. The film is stark and disturbing to watch with touches of dark humor.

The version screened here at SXSW has been significantly expanded to 72 minutes from the 54 minute version that screened in Toronto. The director has added an extended interview with a recently discharged US soldier (Thompson) who guarded Yassin Abbas in Abu Gharib. His presence adds a human element to the American presence. It shows that while many individual soldiers are competent, well-intentioned, and humane, the American presence has become a self-destructive nightmare.

This film should be widely viewed by Americans, particularly those who believe that we are succeeded in winning the "War on Terror" through our continued presence in Iraq.

Look this is a good documentary about Journalisim/prison and USA brutality. I loved it, but the DVD I rented from Hollywood Video had the worst audio I seen since I've been in film school.

Is this for real or am I just tripping, the levels were all over the place. The main interview that is the narrative voice of the entire film was so low and everything else was high enough to wake the neighbors down the street. Didn't they have a post audio mixer?

Did anyone else have this problem or am I just tripping'?

Otherwise I wanted to really enjoy this but I couldn't get over the amateur audio. Come on this was a great story. Is it really this easy to make a movie and sell it and have audio issues. I don't think so. But every one in the room was agreeing this is bizarre. Maybe and hopefully this was a bad DVD, for what could be a great documentary.

Imagine you're an Iraqi journalist who captures images and stories of the American occupation. Some of the stories show the humanity of the soldiers befriending the kids, giving them chocolates or playing soccer with them. You watch your once beautiful country burn and see nothing except an apocalyptic scene that is now your reality.

Yunnis Abbas is the subject of this film. He was once taken prisoner and tortured by Uday Hussein. Under the American occupation, Abbas is mistaken, along with his brothers, as insurgents who are building a bomb in their home. The brothers are all good people with responsible jobs and a devotion to their mom. All of the brothers, including Yunnis, are taken and interrogated but of course, they know nothing about the insurgents because they are ordinary men caught in the wrong place at the wrong time. An embedded videographer who accompanied the Marines on a raid of the Abbas' family home films Yunnis as he's got his hands on his head and proclaiming innocence--he's just a journalist. Nobody believes him.

This is an unsettling film. One day you're on the beach or celebrating at a friend's party. The next thing you know, you're caught up in the hell of Abu Ghraib, accused of plotting to kill British prime minister, Tony Blair, because you've done some work for the BBC.

This is indeed another documentary about the injustice that so many Iraqis see as they try to eek out an existence under the American occupation. What the viewer sees here is the difficulty that the Americans have in identifying the good guys from the bad. They also have little awareness that they themselves may actually be the bad guys of this situation. Sure, they perceive themselves as liberators but are they when so many Iraqi men are rounded up and questioned mercilessly about their involvement with anti-U.S. activity.

The film isn't perfect--it resembles an extended 60 Minutes interview with a man who has definitely been wronged, along with his brothers. One of the most emotionally engaging scenes is when the brothers ask if their mom is okay; they're not to sure if the soldiers will cause harm to their mother. One soldier responds kindly while another one dismisses their pleas to take care of their mom.

The filmmaker uses an interesting technique of making certain parts resemble panels of a comic book. At first, I thought that this was odd and off-putting. In the end, it made a lot of sense. Comic books are full of good guys and villains. This war is also full of Rambos and guys who see themselves as the good guys. Whether they are or not remains to be something that will one day be determined in history texts.

I just saw the film at a sneak preview screening in New York where we did not know what we were seeing. It's not the kind of film I would normally see, but I found that Mr. Abbas' story opened my eyes to what average Iraqis have suffered in this war. More, his story--and the charges against him--would be extremely funny if were not for the fact that they are true. Yes, US intelligence thought he was plotting to kill Tony Blair. How they thought he was supposed to do that (the only evidence they found was a bottle of shampoo!) is beyond me. The real shocker in the film is just how bad the conditions in Abu Ghraib were. The army admits now that up to 80% of the 1000s of prisoners there were in the wrong place at the wrong time.

I also agree with the previous poster that the comic imagery is a surprise, but it does work. The whole story reads like a comedy of errors--complete with cartoonish villains.

"The Prisoner Or: How I Planned to Kill Tony Blair" is a movie with one hell of a provocative, eye-catching title. It's only after you figure out what the movie is actually about, however, that you get the full ironic flavor of that title.

This timely documentary chronicles the story of Yunis Khatayer Abbas, a freelance Iraqi journalist who, along with two of his younger brothers, was falsely accused of planning to assassinate the British Prime Minister during one of his official trips to Baghdad. The movie makes it clear that Yunis and his siblings were innocent from the get-go, and that, after serving nine grueling months at sites including the notorious Abu Ghraib, they were finally released back to their worried families, with a simple muttered "sorry" from the American commanders as sole compensation for the misery they'd suffered.

The story behind the movie is almost as intriguing as the movie itself. Yunis first came to the attention of documentary filmmaker Michael Tucker when the latter was embedded with a National Guard unit - whose job it was to scour Bagdad neighborhoods for suspected terrorists and weapon caches - on the night Yunis was arrested. Yunis' pleas of innocence, as well as his assertion that he was himself a journalist, piqued the interest of Tucker, who, two years later, decided to follow up on the story and find out what had become of the man.

A large portion of the movie's 72-minute running time is dedicated to Yunis speaking freely to the camera, relating the experiences that happened to him in his own unedited words. In addition, Tucker and his co-director, Petra Epperlein (also his wife), include footage of Yunis' actual arrest (first seen in Tucker's previous film, "Gunner Palace"), home movies of Yunis and his family at home and at the beach in happier times, and interviews with humane soldiers who served as guards during Yunis' captivity in Abu Ghraib. The brutalities and indignities Yunis suffered during his imprisonment come through loud and clear as he recounts the horrors of his experience. Epperlein, an artist in her own right, has also provided a series of stark graphic images to go along with Yunis' words.

Given its subject matter, "The Prisoner" will undoubtedly be seen by some on the Right as a mere leftist screed or tract, one designed to paint the Americans in the worst light possible and, in so doing, "provide aid and comfort to the enemy." It would be truly a shame if anyone saw the movie in such simplistic terms, especially as Yunis makes it quite clear that he was no fan of Saddam Hussein either, having suffered imprisonment and torture for daring to speak out against injustice under that regime as well. Plus, the movie emphasizes the humanity of many of the American fighters in standing up against the hellish treatment being inflicted on the prisoners under their care. Yunis speaks in glowing terms of some of these men, and it is clear that, through the experience, he forged lifelong relationships with a number of them. Yunis' understandable bitterness appears to extend only to the individuals responsible for his predicament, not to Americans in general.

It is a well-known, but rarely practiced, truism that the willingness to engage in honest self-criticism is the first step towards uncovering the truth and achieving justice in the world. "The Prisoner" is a small but crucial step in that direction.