The Boys from Baghdad High
Encyclopedia
The Boys from Baghdad High, also known as Baghdad High, is a British/Iraqi television documentary film. It was first shown in the United Kingdom at the 2007 Sheffield Doc/Fest, before airing on BBC Two
on 8 January 2008. It also aired in many other countries including France, Australia, the United States, Canada, Germany and the Netherlands. It documents the lives of four Iraqi
schoolboys of different religious or ethnic backgrounds over the course of one year in the form of a video diary. The documentary was filmed by the boys themselves, who were given video cameras for the project.
Directed and produced by Ivan O'Mahoney and Laura Winter of Renegade Pictures and StoryLabTV, for the United Kingdom's British Broadcasting Corporation, Home Box Office
in the United States, and the Franco-German network Arte
, The Boys from Baghdad High was produced by Alan Hayling and Karen O'Connor for the BBC, Hans Robert Eisenhauer for Arte, and Sheila Nevins for HBO.
The Boys from Baghdad High received high viewership when it initially aired in the UK, and was reviewed favourably in the media. It was named the Best News and Current Affairs Film at the European Independent Film Festival, won the Premier Prize at the Sandford St. Martin Trust
Awards, and was nominated for awards at two film festivals. The documentary also received the Radio Times
Readers Award, and a nomination for the Amnesty International
2008 Television Documentary and Docudrama UK Media Award.
, a mixed-race, middle-class neighbourhood in the Karrada
suburb of Baghdad
, Iraq. Entering their senior year in 2006, each has high expectations for the year ahead and hope to graduate so they can have a chance to attend university. At the same time, the boys must also deal with the increasing sectarian violence that is starting to extend into Karrada. They face the threats of roadside bombings, the hassles of security checkpoints on their way to school, frequent curfews, the constant presence of American Apache helicopters overhead, and the deterioration of their neighbourhood which becomes rife with assassinations, muggings and kidnappings. Many of their fellow students, unmotivated and academically underperforming, are absent from school.
Ali Shadman is one of the few Kurdish people
remaining in Baghdad. His family are struggling financially and resort to siphoning petrol from their car to run their back-up generator when the power grid fails. When the generator breaks down one night, Ali begins to wonder why he is fixing it against a backdrop of gunfire, instead of studying in peace. Another night, he reports the neighbourhood's news but explains there is nothing to speak of other than the usual explosions, violence, and death. Anmar Refat, a Syriac Christian, tries to remain philosophical and hopes that armed gangs will not attack the school. His family, however, are more nervous about any nearby gunfire, as their Christian beliefs increase the threat to their lives if anyone were to find out about them. Anmar has a girlfriend, whom he can contact only via his mobile phone, but he has not heard from her in several days, leaving him worried about whether she has found another boyfriend, or has been hurt in the violence. Hayder Khalid, a Shia Moslem, hopes to become a famous singer-songwriter. He frequently downloads music videos English pop music so he can learn popular English songs and dance moves. Mohammad Raed, a Sunni
Moslem, is the class clown at school, who prefers playing sports and fooling around with his friends to studying. Unaware of his behaviour at school, his mother believes he is hard-working, self-sufficient and mature, and believes he will graduate and go to university.
Halfway through the school year, Ali's family moves to the more peaceful Kurdish region in Northern Iraq but after living there for several months, Ali says that he is homesick and misses the action and noise of Baghdad. Mohammad, feeling lonely, "adopts" a bird with a broken wing and a mouse he finds in the house. This brings him some comfort, but his mother later demands that he get rid of the mouse as she does not want "vermin" in the house. Mohammad's family rejoice when Saddam Hussein
is sentenced, and feel that his later execution was justified, as to do otherwise would have made the Iraqi people look weak. Conversely, Anmar's family is upset at his execution, as they feel that the people who came into power were no better than Hussein was. Hyder's mother says that many Iraqi people were hopeful about the arrival of American forces, and that it is wrong to blame America for all of the problems in Iraq. She notes that the bloodshed has yet to stop as the Sunni continues to kill the Shiite, and vice versa. As the film continues, Hyder's family loses its income and they start to sell their furniture to earn extra money.
At the end of the year, the boys must pass seven final exams to graduate. Anmar, Hyder and Ali each fail two subjects, and are given the option to retake the exams. Anmar passes the retakes and aspires to study English literature in college, and his family decide to move to the safer region of Arbul now that he has graduated. Hyder also retakes his exams and passes, but his family can no longer afford to pay for the university fees. Ali chooses not to retake the exams, and his family leave Iraq. Mohammad fails four subjects and must repeat his senior year. He chooses to do so at a different school while working at his uncle's scooter repair shop. As the documentary closes, it notes that during the year of filming, two of the boys' classmates were killed, six were kidnapped, and seventy-five left Iraq.
and an attorney in the Netherlands, and had directed the 2006 documentary How to Plan a Revolution, which profiled two young activists who attempted to remove the Azerbaijani government from power by staging an "Orange" revolution. He had also worked for the BBC
, Channel 4
, CNN
, and PBS in Ethiopia, Iraq, Sudan and Colombia. Winter had previously worked for CNN, 60 Minutes
, CBS Evening News
, CBS Radio
, The Christian Science Monitor
and the New York Daily News in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Jordan and Iraq. The Boys from Baghdad High was the first time she was credited as a director.
O'Mahoney and Winter began working on the film in 2006. Winter had watched a film called The Women's Story, about two Iraqi women who had journeyed around the country and filmed what they saw. They wanted to make a documentary about "the people never seen on the evening news, [instead of] presidents, prime ministers, generals and militants ... claiming to know something of Iraq's future". Winter explained that "all these documentaries coming out of Iraq were done for or by adults. Iraqi children had not been more than a UN statistic about the dead, kidnapped or injured", so they decided to concentrate on what they viewed as the "real source of Iraq's future" – teenagers. "I wanted to tell the story of Iraq in a different way. As journalists, we do stories about kids and teenagers, but we don't hear from them. If you go to the UN reports, they are just a number and that's it." O'Mahoney was a little more reticent; he had recently worked in Iraq but did not wish to return due to the civil war and the deteriorating condition of the country. When it was decided to use a school as a backdrop to the story, which could also be used to provide a chronological narrative, O'Mahoney and Winter realised it would be too dangerous for the students to be seen with either a Western or Iraqi camera crew because it would draw too much attention to them, and so they decided that the students would film the documentary themselves.
was mixed and integrated with high numbers of Shiites and Christians. She asked her former driver and translator, who had attended the school, if he would contact the principal. Initially the school was suspicious of their intentions, but decided to trust the judgement of Winter's translator. Principal Ra'ad Jawad selected eight boys to take part in the documentary because he knew they could be discreet about making the documentary, would not get bored, and would remain committed to filming their lives for a year. The producers wanted their cast to include girls, and had found a school and families willing to take part in the documentary, but the then-Minister of Education refused to let them take part. Jawad travelled to London to meet the producers and he was trained to operate the video cameras that the boys were to use. The cameras and tapes were sent into Iraq via the BBC News
department, which were then passed onto the school. Jawad and two Iraqi associate producers trained the boys how to use the cameras. Two months into filming, four of the boys dropped out of the project, leaving Hayder Khalid, Anmar Refat, Ali Shadman, and Mohammad Raed. O'Mahoney and Winter never met the boys while the documentary was being produced because it was such a high-risk assignment.
, he and his friend celebrate with a bonfire
in his friend's back yard, but after debating whether a noise they hear is fireworks or gunfire, Hayder rushes home. When another boy is driven to school one morning, they reach a special forces roadside checkpoint. He explains, "if they see me with a camera they will take me to prison; they'll think I'm a terrorist who wants to bomb them."
, especially those in the BBC News's Baghdad Bureau high-risk team, to smuggle the tapes out of Iraq. When curfews were enforced, weeks passed before the producers received new footage because it was impossible for anybody to leave their homes or the country.
The execution of Saddam Hussein
, which Anwar had filmed from the internet from start to finish, was excluded from the documentary. "We had a big debate about whether or not that should go into the film", O'Connor explained. Water continued, "it was one of those things where to see it, it just gets you. But we had to ask ourselves, does it help our story? No." Footage that was nearly edited out included a scene where Anwar had to siphon petrol out of the family car for the house's generator. Anwar explained to the camera that he needed to do it because their family was so poor. "That's tough", commented Water, "because that's a dishonour to his family."
, and 1 August 2008 at the Traverse City Film Festival
. The first time Winter and O'Mahoney met one of the film's subjects was at the 2008 Tribeca Film Festival, nearly a year after the filming had completed. Ali and his family had relocated to the US since completing the documentary, and so he was able to attend the screening. Winter and Ali met a second time at the Traverse City Film Festival. The producers had tried to get the boys visa
s to enter the UK for a screening in London, but they were denied entry by the British Government
.
It premièred on television in the UK on BBC Two
, a national terrestrial
television network
, on 8 January 2008 at 9:00 p.m. as part of the This World documentary series. Overnight viewing figures indicated that 600,000 households had watched the film, which was three percent of the total television audience for that time slot. It was broadcast in France and Germany on the joint-venture network Arte
on 18 March 2008 at 9:00 p.m., with the French title Bagdad, le Bac Sous les Bombes, and Die Jungs von der Bagdad-High in Germany. It aired on the premium cable network HBO as Baghdad High on 4 August 2008 at 9:00 p.m., and was available on HBO's video on demand
service until 21 September 2008. The documentary also aired in Australia on the Special Broadcasting Service
, Canada on CBC Newsworld
, and in the Netherlands on VPRO
.
The documentary was streamed online by the BBC using its BBC iPlayer
service to UK residents for seven days after the initial broadcast. A Region 2 DVD of the documentary can be obtained, although it can only be purchased directly from the BBC and is not available in stores.
said that giving the video cameras to the students was an excellent idea because the depiction of their school-life versus the increasing danger was captured "with neutral equality [so] that the film is able to capture the interiority of its subjects more acutely than a straight-forward examination of violence would". Thomas Sutcliffe of The Independent
said, "its storyline was governed not by a tick-list of stock narrative dilemmas and secrets but the cruel uncertainties that occupation and insurgency have brought to Baghdad." Time Out New York gave the film five out of five stars, and PopMatters
rated it 8 out of 10. The Washington Post
s Paul Farhi said, "HBO has carved a niche as the TV home of some of the most compelling programs about the Iraq war ... Baghdad High does no harm to HBO's burgeoning war cred[ibility]." Variety
, The Christian Science Monitor
, LA Weekly
, and the Los Angeles Times
also praised the film. At the Question-and-Answer session following a screening at the Tribeca Film Festival, one audience member, a new recruit to the United States Marine Corps
, told Ali, who had also attended, "I finally know what life is like behind those walls and what you guys are like, and it's been really, really fantastic."
There were complaints, however, that the documentary did not depict enough of the political aspects of the Iraqi War. Farhi said, "The 90-minute documentary doesn't say much about the larger issues facing Iraq, but it does capture some small and captivating human stories.... They happen to live in what one boy describes as 'the most dangerous city on Earth.' You don't see much of Iraq's violence in Baghdad High, but you surely feel its gravity and their dread." The Boston Herald
s Mark Perigard said that he felt the documentary was "a personal story, not a political one". In The New York Times
, Mike Hale commented, "While the boys talk frequently about violence and despair, they rarely discuss politics or ethnic differences (with the exception of Anmar, the Christian) and they almost never directly address the American presence. We do hear some parental opinions, which are surprisingly neutral. One mother says: 'We shouldn't blame the Americans for everything. There is something wrong with us too'." Jennifer Marin, a culture columnist from the Los Angeles Times
, wrote at About.com
, that while it was innovative, informative and a noble experiment, the footage is "undistinguished and rough because the hands holding the cameras weren't skilled and the eyes framing the shots were not those of artists or keen observers." She thought that, with the exception of Mohammad, the boys lacked charisma, and that the film failed to capture the drama of living in a war-zone, due to the lack of a director calling the shots. Perigard said, "After the time you've invested [as a viewer], it’s not nearly satisfying enough. For all the questions this fascinating film raises, it might as well be written in sand."
Many reviewers noted the similarities between the Iraqi boys and those from Western cultures. Peter Scarlet, the Artistic Director at the Tribeca Film Festival, said, "What's fascinating about the film that resulted is how very familiar and ordinary these kids are – they're not really all that different from your own teenagers or the kids you went to school with. The kids of Baghdad High also open us up to a very different sense of life in Iraq than what we've been seeing on the nightly news for five years." The Huffington Post said, "previously it had been unfathomable that students in Baghdad might be experiencing the same ephemeral and narcissistic heartbreak as we are in the United States." Farhi and Nicholls noticed that the Iraqi students do the same things as American high school students, such as listening to rap music, trying to study without distractions, playing sports, becoming stressed over their final exams and acting silly with their friends. Perigard commented, "despite the cultural differences, Ali, Anmar, Hayder and Mohammad will seem instantly familiar to anyone who has spent time around a teenage boy. They like to wrestle each other, love Western music, dream big and have trouble buckling down in school."
The New York magazine
said that the film's premise of four high-school friends videotaping their senior year "sounds like a fluffy reality show"; Bill Weber of Slant Magazine
said, "putting the trials of MTV reality-show prima donnas in perspective, the middle-class quartet will be relatable to this BBC/HBO production's audience in their easy embrace of Western kid stuff ... Directors Ivan O'Mahoney and Laura Winter balance [portray] an everyday sense of the adolescents' wartime anxiety with the more commonplace juvenile relief." Similarly, The Huffington Post raised comparisons with MTV reality shows, but was pleased to see that the Iraqi boys did not play to the cameras because they had not been exposed to programmes such as Laguna Beach: The Real Orange County
or The Paper
. That juvenile relief was commented on by many; The Washington Post highlighted Mohammad's adoption of an unwelcome mouse in the house. Hale described a scene where Mohammad and Ali act like hostage and captor. "Suddenly Ali is holding a large knife. 'He's being naughty!' Mohammad says. Ali holds the knife near Mohammad and says, a little too unemotionally: 'Allah! This is the first hostage. I'm going to slaughter him this way.' Mohammad tells him to stop fooling around. Ali relents. 'O.K. He just got a presidential pardon. He can live'." Reuters also commented on this, and more banter between Ali and Mohammad. "Ali is shown making a pretend hostage video with Mohammad, and then teasing his friend for his smelly feet. 'If Chemical Ali really wanted to destroy the north he should have fired a rocket with Mohammad's socks in it'."
The depiction of the stark differences between Iraq and the Western world also received comments. Farhi described the school as having "all the charm of an abandoned prison", and continued with, "visiting a friend who lives a few hundred yards away involves running a potential gauntlet of kidnappers and snipers; getting to school on time means navigating military checkpoints. Before a big exam, teachers frisk their students for explosives," while Perigard said, "at night, their neighbourhoods are riddled with gunfire and explosions". In the New York Daily News, Patrick Huguenin wrote, "American teens wouldn't recognize other scenes showing how life slips into a heavily regulated series of checkpoints and curfews." Hale said, "The way the boys can tell without looking whether it's an Apache or a Chinook helicopter overhead, the way the curtains are always drawn, the level of physical contact and affection among the men ... would be alien to American sensibilities."
2008 UK Media Award in the category for Television Documentary and Docudramas, and the European Independent Film Festival named it the Best News and Current Affairs film. It was nominated for the Readers' Award in the Radio Times
, and in May 2008 it won the Premiere Prize at the Sandford St. Martin Trust
Awards, which acknowledges excellence in religious broadcasting. The Trust's chairman and former BBC Head of Religious Broadcasting Colin Morris
said of the documentary, "We saw the way faith breaks into secular life in the chaos of present day Iraq. Coming from different ethnic and religious backgrounds the boys showed that despite the war their daily preoccupations were much the same as those of teenage boys the world over – girlfriends, parents, sport, fashion, exams, music. Would their friendship survive? Ultimately the programme confronted British viewers with the question: 'What in God's name are we doing there? The film received a standing ovation from the audience at the Traverse City Film Festival, and at the Tribeca Film Festival, it was short-listed for the 2008 World Documentary Feature Competition, competing against eleven other non-fiction films for Best Documentary Film and Best New Documentary Filmmaker.
BBC Two
BBC Two is the second television channel operated by the British Broadcasting Corporation in the United Kingdom. It covers a wide range of subject matter, but tending towards more 'highbrow' programmes than the more mainstream and popular BBC One. Like the BBC's other domestic TV and radio...
on 8 January 2008. It also aired in many other countries including France, Australia, the United States, Canada, Germany and the Netherlands. It documents the lives of four Iraqi
Iraqi people
The Iraqi people or Mesopotamian people are natives or inhabitants of the country of Iraq, known since antiquity as Mesopotamia , with a large diaspora throughout the Arab World, Europe, the Americas, and...
schoolboys of different religious or ethnic backgrounds over the course of one year in the form of a video diary. The documentary was filmed by the boys themselves, who were given video cameras for the project.
Directed and produced by Ivan O'Mahoney and Laura Winter of Renegade Pictures and StoryLabTV, for the United Kingdom's British Broadcasting Corporation, Home Box Office
Home Box Office
HBO, short for Home Box Office, is an American premium cable television network, owned by Time Warner. , HBO's programming reaches 28.2 million subscribers in the United States, making it the second largest premium network in America . In addition to its U.S...
in the United States, and the Franco-German network Arte
Arte
Arte is a Franco-German TV network. It is a European culture channel and aims to promote quality programming especially in areas of culture and the arts...
, The Boys from Baghdad High was produced by Alan Hayling and Karen O'Connor for the BBC, Hans Robert Eisenhauer for Arte, and Sheila Nevins for HBO.
The Boys from Baghdad High received high viewership when it initially aired in the UK, and was reviewed favourably in the media. It was named the Best News and Current Affairs Film at the European Independent Film Festival, won the Premier Prize at the Sandford St. Martin Trust
Sandford St. Martin Trust
The Sandford St. Martin Trust is a United Kingdom-based religious charity established in 1978 that promotes excellence in religious broadcasting...
Awards, and was nominated for awards at two film festivals. The documentary also received the Radio Times
Radio Times
Radio Times is a UK weekly television and radio programme listings magazine, owned by the BBC. It has been published since 1923 by BBC Magazines, which also provides an on-line listings service under the same title...
Readers Award, and a nomination for the Amnesty International
Amnesty International
Amnesty International is an international non-governmental organisation whose stated mission is "to conduct research and generate action to prevent and end grave abuses of human rights, and to demand justice for those whose rights have been violated."Following a publication of Peter Benenson's...
2008 Television Documentary and Docudrama UK Media Award.
Synopsis
The film brings together the video diaries recorded by four friends and students at the Tariq bin Ziad High School for Boys in ZayounaZayouna
Zayouna is a neighborhood of Baghdad, Iraq.Zayouna a beautiful residential area in Baghdad, Iraq's capital city located on the side of the Rusafa city of Baghdad, surrounded by the Army Channel from the north to the south by the rapid and Muhammad al-Qasim al-Ghadeer is located between the east...
, a mixed-race, middle-class neighbourhood in the Karrada
Karrada
Karrada is a major affluent district of the city Baghdad, Iraq. It is of a mixed population but it is noted for having majority of Shia population. The presence of Christians are notable in the area...
suburb of Baghdad
Baghdad
Baghdad is the capital of Iraq, as well as the coterminous Baghdad Governorate. The population of Baghdad in 2011 is approximately 7,216,040...
, Iraq. Entering their senior year in 2006, each has high expectations for the year ahead and hope to graduate so they can have a chance to attend university. At the same time, the boys must also deal with the increasing sectarian violence that is starting to extend into Karrada. They face the threats of roadside bombings, the hassles of security checkpoints on their way to school, frequent curfews, the constant presence of American Apache helicopters overhead, and the deterioration of their neighbourhood which becomes rife with assassinations, muggings and kidnappings. Many of their fellow students, unmotivated and academically underperforming, are absent from school.
Ali Shadman is one of the few Kurdish people
Kurdish people
The Kurdish people, or Kurds , are an Iranian people native to the Middle East, mostly inhabiting a region known as Kurdistan, which includes adjacent parts of Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Turkey...
remaining in Baghdad. His family are struggling financially and resort to siphoning petrol from their car to run their back-up generator when the power grid fails. When the generator breaks down one night, Ali begins to wonder why he is fixing it against a backdrop of gunfire, instead of studying in peace. Another night, he reports the neighbourhood's news but explains there is nothing to speak of other than the usual explosions, violence, and death. Anmar Refat, a Syriac Christian, tries to remain philosophical and hopes that armed gangs will not attack the school. His family, however, are more nervous about any nearby gunfire, as their Christian beliefs increase the threat to their lives if anyone were to find out about them. Anmar has a girlfriend, whom he can contact only via his mobile phone, but he has not heard from her in several days, leaving him worried about whether she has found another boyfriend, or has been hurt in the violence. Hayder Khalid, a Shia Moslem, hopes to become a famous singer-songwriter. He frequently downloads music videos English pop music so he can learn popular English songs and dance moves. Mohammad Raed, a Sunni
Sunni Islam
Sunni Islam is the largest branch of Islam. Sunni Muslims are referred to in Arabic as ʾAhl ūs-Sunnah wa āl-Ǧamāʿah or ʾAhl ūs-Sunnah for short; in English, they are known as Sunni Muslims, Sunnis or Sunnites....
Moslem, is the class clown at school, who prefers playing sports and fooling around with his friends to studying. Unaware of his behaviour at school, his mother believes he is hard-working, self-sufficient and mature, and believes he will graduate and go to university.
Halfway through the school year, Ali's family moves to the more peaceful Kurdish region in Northern Iraq but after living there for several months, Ali says that he is homesick and misses the action and noise of Baghdad. Mohammad, feeling lonely, "adopts" a bird with a broken wing and a mouse he finds in the house. This brings him some comfort, but his mother later demands that he get rid of the mouse as she does not want "vermin" in the house. Mohammad's family rejoice when Saddam Hussein
Saddam Hussein
Saddam Hussein Abd al-Majid al-Tikriti was the fifth President of Iraq, serving in this capacity from 16 July 1979 until 9 April 2003...
is sentenced, and feel that his later execution was justified, as to do otherwise would have made the Iraqi people look weak. Conversely, Anmar's family is upset at his execution, as they feel that the people who came into power were no better than Hussein was. Hyder's mother says that many Iraqi people were hopeful about the arrival of American forces, and that it is wrong to blame America for all of the problems in Iraq. She notes that the bloodshed has yet to stop as the Sunni continues to kill the Shiite, and vice versa. As the film continues, Hyder's family loses its income and they start to sell their furniture to earn extra money.
At the end of the year, the boys must pass seven final exams to graduate. Anmar, Hyder and Ali each fail two subjects, and are given the option to retake the exams. Anmar passes the retakes and aspires to study English literature in college, and his family decide to move to the safer region of Arbul now that he has graduated. Hyder also retakes his exams and passes, but his family can no longer afford to pay for the university fees. Ali chooses not to retake the exams, and his family leave Iraq. Mohammad fails four subjects and must repeat his senior year. He chooses to do so at a different school while working at his uncle's scooter repair shop. As the documentary closes, it notes that during the year of filming, two of the boys' classmates were killed, six were kidnapped, and seventy-five left Iraq.
Concept
The Boys from Baghdad High was co-produced and co-directed by Ivan O'Mahoney and Laura Winter. Before working on the film, O'Mahoney had been a United Nations peacekeeper in BosniaUnited Nations Mission in Bosnia and Herzegovina
The United Nations Mission in Bosnia and Herzegovina was an international organization formed under the United Nations Security Council Resolution 1035 on 21 December 1995. It completed its mandate on 31 December 2002, when it was succeeded by the European Union Police Mission in Bosnia and...
and an attorney in the Netherlands, and had directed the 2006 documentary How to Plan a Revolution, which profiled two young activists who attempted to remove the Azerbaijani government from power by staging an "Orange" revolution. He had also worked for the BBC
BBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...
, Channel 4
Channel 4
Channel 4 is a British public-service television broadcaster which began working on 2 November 1982. Although largely commercially self-funded, it is ultimately publicly owned; originally a subsidiary of the Independent Broadcasting Authority , the station is now owned and operated by the Channel...
, CNN
CNN
Cable News Network is a U.S. cable news channel founded in 1980 by Ted Turner. Upon its launch, CNN was the first channel to provide 24-hour television news coverage, and the first all-news television channel in the United States...
, and PBS in Ethiopia, Iraq, Sudan and Colombia. Winter had previously worked for CNN, 60 Minutes
60 Minutes
60 Minutes is an American television news magazine, which has run on CBS since 1968. The program was created by producer Don Hewitt who set it apart by using a unique style of reporter-centered investigation....
, CBS Evening News
CBS Evening News
CBS Evening News is the flagship nightly television news program of the American television network CBS. The network has broadcast this program since 1948, and has used the CBS Evening News title since 1963....
, CBS Radio
CBS Radio
CBS Radio, Inc., formerly known as Infinity Broadcasting Corporation, is one of the largest owners and operators of radio stations in the United States, third behind main rival Clear Channel Communications and Cumulus Media. CBS Radio owns around 130 radio stations across the country...
, The Christian Science Monitor
The Christian Science Monitor
The Christian Science Monitor is an international newspaper published daily online, Monday to Friday, and weekly in print. It was started in 1908 by Mary Baker Eddy, the founder of the Church of Christ, Scientist. As of 2009, the print circulation was 67,703.The CSM is a newspaper that covers...
and the New York Daily News in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Jordan and Iraq. The Boys from Baghdad High was the first time she was credited as a director.
O'Mahoney and Winter began working on the film in 2006. Winter had watched a film called The Women's Story, about two Iraqi women who had journeyed around the country and filmed what they saw. They wanted to make a documentary about "the people never seen on the evening news, [instead of] presidents, prime ministers, generals and militants ... claiming to know something of Iraq's future". Winter explained that "all these documentaries coming out of Iraq were done for or by adults. Iraqi children had not been more than a UN statistic about the dead, kidnapped or injured", so they decided to concentrate on what they viewed as the "real source of Iraq's future" – teenagers. "I wanted to tell the story of Iraq in a different way. As journalists, we do stories about kids and teenagers, but we don't hear from them. If you go to the UN reports, they are just a number and that's it." O'Mahoney was a little more reticent; he had recently worked in Iraq but did not wish to return due to the civil war and the deteriorating condition of the country. When it was decided to use a school as a backdrop to the story, which could also be used to provide a chronological narrative, O'Mahoney and Winter realised it would be too dangerous for the students to be seen with either a Western or Iraqi camera crew because it would draw too much attention to them, and so they decided that the students would film the documentary themselves.
Casting
Producers chose boys who were students of Tariq bin Ziad High School. The school was holding on to the notion of a united Iraq, even as the country was becoming increasingly racially and religiously segregated. Having worked in Iraq in 2003, Winter knew that the Baghdad district KarradaKarrada
Karrada is a major affluent district of the city Baghdad, Iraq. It is of a mixed population but it is noted for having majority of Shia population. The presence of Christians are notable in the area...
was mixed and integrated with high numbers of Shiites and Christians. She asked her former driver and translator, who had attended the school, if he would contact the principal. Initially the school was suspicious of their intentions, but decided to trust the judgement of Winter's translator. Principal Ra'ad Jawad selected eight boys to take part in the documentary because he knew they could be discreet about making the documentary, would not get bored, and would remain committed to filming their lives for a year. The producers wanted their cast to include girls, and had found a school and families willing to take part in the documentary, but the then-Minister of Education refused to let them take part. Jawad travelled to London to meet the producers and he was trained to operate the video cameras that the boys were to use. The cameras and tapes were sent into Iraq via the BBC News
BBC News
BBC News is the department of the British Broadcasting Corporation responsible for the gathering and broadcasting of news and current affairs. The department is the world's largest broadcast news organisation and generates about 120 hours of radio and television output each day, as well as online...
department, which were then passed onto the school. Jawad and two Iraqi associate producers trained the boys how to use the cameras. Two months into filming, four of the boys dropped out of the project, leaving Hayder Khalid, Anmar Refat, Ali Shadman, and Mohammad Raed. O'Mahoney and Winter never met the boys while the documentary was being produced because it was such a high-risk assignment.
Filming
The producers were diligent in ensuring the boys' security. O'Mahoney explained: "They were under very strict security rules when they were filming. They were told not to act as news cameramen. They were not allowed to film in the street. They could only film at school or at home, in secure environments." Winter added, "they are not paid news cameramen, and that was not the point of the film. Would they normally be running down the street toward a firefight to film it? No. Would they run toward a bombing, knowing that there could be a secondary explosion or a group of soldiers, who could start, at any second, firing wildly into the crowd, to film a piece of video? No. That's not real life for any Iraqi civilian." Nevertheless, Hayder sometimes filmed outside at night, and explained to the camera that he had to be careful because people are robbed if they are seen carrying even a mobile phone. On New Year's EveNew Year's Eve
New Year's Eve is observed annually on December 31, the final day of any given year in the Gregorian calendar. In modern societies, New Year's Eve is often celebrated at social gatherings, during which participants dance, eat, consume alcoholic beverages, and watch or light fireworks to mark the...
, he and his friend celebrate with a bonfire
Bonfire
A bonfire is a controlled outdoor fire used for informal disposal of burnable waste material or as part of a celebration. Celebratory bonfires are typically designed to burn quickly and may be very large...
in his friend's back yard, but after debating whether a noise they hear is fireworks or gunfire, Hayder rushes home. When another boy is driven to school one morning, they reach a special forces roadside checkpoint. He explains, "if they see me with a camera they will take me to prison; they'll think I'm a terrorist who wants to bomb them."
Editing
More than 300 hours of footage was recorded by the students and the two Iraqi associate producers. It was transcribed, translated and edited into a 90-minute film. Getting the tapes out of Iraq proved difficult for Winter and O'Mahoney, who remained in the UK. They had to rely on journalists from many news agenciesNews agency
A news agency is an organization of journalists established to supply news reports to news organizations: newspapers, magazines, and radio and television broadcasters. Such an agency may also be referred to as a wire service, newswire or news service.-History:The oldest news agency is Agence...
, especially those in the BBC News's Baghdad Bureau high-risk team, to smuggle the tapes out of Iraq. When curfews were enforced, weeks passed before the producers received new footage because it was impossible for anybody to leave their homes or the country.
The execution of Saddam Hussein
Execution of Saddam Hussein
The execution of Saddam Hussein took place on December 30, 2006 . Saddam was sentenced to death by hanging, after being found guilty and convicted of crimes against humanity by the Iraqi Special Tribunal for the murder of 148 Iraqi Shi'ite in the town of Dujail in 1982, in retaliation for an...
, which Anwar had filmed from the internet from start to finish, was excluded from the documentary. "We had a big debate about whether or not that should go into the film", O'Connor explained. Water continued, "it was one of those things where to see it, it just gets you. But we had to ask ourselves, does it help our story? No." Footage that was nearly edited out included a scene where Anwar had to siphon petrol out of the family car for the house's generator. Anwar explained to the camera that he needed to do it because their family was so poor. "That's tough", commented Water, "because that's a dishonour to his family."
Distribution
The Boys from Baghdad High received its world première at the 2007 Sheffield Doc/Fest, an annual film festival for documentary productions held in Sheffield, South Yorkshire. In the US it was screened on 29 April 2008 at the Tribeca Film FestivalTribeca Film Festival
The Tribeca Film Festival is a film festival founded in 2002 by Jane Rosenthal, Robert De Niro and Craig Hatkoff in a response to the September 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and the consequent loss of vitality in the TriBeCa neighborhood in Lower Manhattan.The mission of the festival...
, and 1 August 2008 at the Traverse City Film Festival
Traverse City Film Festival
The Traverse City Film Festival is an annual film festival held every late July through early August in Traverse City, Michigan. The festival was created as an annual event in 2005 to help “save one of America's few indigenous art forms—the cinema." The event was co-founded by Michael Moore, the...
. The first time Winter and O'Mahoney met one of the film's subjects was at the 2008 Tribeca Film Festival, nearly a year after the filming had completed. Ali and his family had relocated to the US since completing the documentary, and so he was able to attend the screening. Winter and Ali met a second time at the Traverse City Film Festival. The producers had tried to get the boys visa
Visa (document)
A visa is a document showing that a person is authorized to enter the territory for which it was issued, subject to permission of an immigration official at the time of actual entry. The authorization may be a document, but more commonly it is a stamp endorsed in the applicant's passport...
s to enter the UK for a screening in London, but they were denied entry by the British Government
Government of the United Kingdom
Her Majesty's Government is the central government of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. The Government is led by the Prime Minister, who selects all the remaining Ministers...
.
It premièred on television in the UK on BBC Two
BBC Two
BBC Two is the second television channel operated by the British Broadcasting Corporation in the United Kingdom. It covers a wide range of subject matter, but tending towards more 'highbrow' programmes than the more mainstream and popular BBC One. Like the BBC's other domestic TV and radio...
, a national terrestrial
Terrestrial television
Terrestrial television is a mode of television broadcasting which does not involve satellite transmission or cables — typically using radio waves through transmitting and receiving antennas or television antenna aerials...
television network
Television network
A television network is a telecommunications network for distribution of television program content, whereby a central operation provides programming to many television stations or pay TV providers. Until the mid-1980s, television programming in most countries of the world was dominated by a small...
, on 8 January 2008 at 9:00 p.m. as part of the This World documentary series. Overnight viewing figures indicated that 600,000 households had watched the film, which was three percent of the total television audience for that time slot. It was broadcast in France and Germany on the joint-venture network Arte
Arte
Arte is a Franco-German TV network. It is a European culture channel and aims to promote quality programming especially in areas of culture and the arts...
on 18 March 2008 at 9:00 p.m., with the French title Bagdad, le Bac Sous les Bombes, and Die Jungs von der Bagdad-High in Germany. It aired on the premium cable network HBO as Baghdad High on 4 August 2008 at 9:00 p.m., and was available on HBO's video on demand
Video on demand
Video on Demand or Audio and Video On Demand are systems which allow users to select and watch/listen to video or audio content on demand...
service until 21 September 2008. The documentary also aired in Australia on the Special Broadcasting Service
Special Broadcasting Service
The Special Broadcasting Service is a hybrid-funded Australian public broadcasting radio and television network. The stated purpose of SBS is "to provide multilingual and multicultural radio and television services that inform, educate and entertain all Australians and, in doing so, reflect...
, Canada on CBC Newsworld
CBC Newsworld
CBC News Network is a Canadian English language Category C specialty news channel owned and operated by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation . It broadcasts into over 10 million homes in Canada. It is the world's third-oldest television service of this nature, after CNN in the United States and...
, and in the Netherlands on VPRO
VPRO
The VPRO was established in the Netherlands in 1926 as a religious broadcasting organization. Falling under the Protestant pillar, it represented the Liberal Protestant current...
.
The documentary was streamed online by the BBC using its BBC iPlayer
BBC iPlayer
BBC iPlayer, commonly shortened to iPlayer, is an internet television and radio service, developed by the BBC to extend its former RealPlayer-based and other streamed video clip content to include whole TV shows....
service to UK residents for seven days after the initial broadcast. A Region 2 DVD of the documentary can be obtained, although it can only be purchased directly from the BBC and is not available in stores.
Critical reception
Reviews for The Boys from Baghdad High were generally favourable. The Huffington PostThe Huffington Post
The Huffington Post is an American news website and content-aggregating blog founded by Arianna Huffington, Kenneth Lerer, and Jonah Peretti, featuring liberal minded columnists and various news sources. The site offers coverage of politics, theology, media, business, entertainment, living, style,...
said that giving the video cameras to the students was an excellent idea because the depiction of their school-life versus the increasing danger was captured "with neutral equality [so] that the film is able to capture the interiority of its subjects more acutely than a straight-forward examination of violence would". Thomas Sutcliffe of The Independent
The Independent
The Independent is a British national morning newspaper published in London by Independent Print Limited, owned by Alexander Lebedev since 2010. It is nicknamed the Indy, while the Sunday edition, The Independent on Sunday, is the Sindy. Launched in 1986, it is one of the youngest UK national daily...
said, "its storyline was governed not by a tick-list of stock narrative dilemmas and secrets but the cruel uncertainties that occupation and insurgency have brought to Baghdad." Time Out New York gave the film five out of five stars, and PopMatters
PopMatters
PopMatters is an international webzine of cultural criticism that covers many aspects of popular culture. PopMatters publishes reviews, interviews, and detailed essays on most cultural products and expressions in areas such as music, television, films, books, video games, comics, sports, theater,...
rated it 8 out of 10. The Washington Post
The Washington Post
The Washington Post is Washington, D.C.'s largest newspaper and its oldest still-existing paper, founded in 1877. Located in the capital of the United States, The Post has a particular emphasis on national politics. D.C., Maryland, and Virginia editions are printed for daily circulation...
s Paul Farhi said, "HBO has carved a niche as the TV home of some of the most compelling programs about the Iraq war ... Baghdad High does no harm to HBO's burgeoning war cred[ibility]." Variety
Variety (magazine)
Variety is an American weekly entertainment-trade magazine founded in New York City, New York, in 1905 by Sime Silverman. With the rise of the importance of the motion-picture industry, Daily Variety, a daily edition based in Los Angeles, California, was founded by Silverman in 1933. In 1998, the...
, The Christian Science Monitor
The Christian Science Monitor
The Christian Science Monitor is an international newspaper published daily online, Monday to Friday, and weekly in print. It was started in 1908 by Mary Baker Eddy, the founder of the Church of Christ, Scientist. As of 2009, the print circulation was 67,703.The CSM is a newspaper that covers...
, LA Weekly
LA Weekly
LA Weekly is a free weekly tabloid-sized "alternative weekly" in Los Angeles, California. It was founded in 1978 by Editor/Publisher Jay Levin and a board of directors that included actor-producer Michael Douglas...
, and the Los Angeles Times
Los Angeles Times
The Los Angeles Times is a daily newspaper published in Los Angeles, California, since 1881. It was the second-largest metropolitan newspaper in circulation in the United States in 2008 and the fourth most widely distributed newspaper in the country....
also praised the film. At the Question-and-Answer session following a screening at the Tribeca Film Festival, one audience member, a new recruit to the United States Marine Corps
United States Marine Corps
The United States Marine Corps is a branch of the United States Armed Forces responsible for providing power projection from the sea, using the mobility of the United States Navy to deliver combined-arms task forces rapidly. It is one of seven uniformed services of the United States...
, told Ali, who had also attended, "I finally know what life is like behind those walls and what you guys are like, and it's been really, really fantastic."
There were complaints, however, that the documentary did not depict enough of the political aspects of the Iraqi War. Farhi said, "The 90-minute documentary doesn't say much about the larger issues facing Iraq, but it does capture some small and captivating human stories.... They happen to live in what one boy describes as 'the most dangerous city on Earth.' You don't see much of Iraq's violence in Baghdad High, but you surely feel its gravity and their dread." The Boston Herald
Boston Herald
The Boston Herald is a daily newspaper that serves Boston, Massachusetts, United States, and its surrounding area. It was started in 1846 and is one of the oldest daily newspapers in the United States...
s Mark Perigard said that he felt the documentary was "a personal story, not a political one". In The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
, Mike Hale commented, "While the boys talk frequently about violence and despair, they rarely discuss politics or ethnic differences (with the exception of Anmar, the Christian) and they almost never directly address the American presence. We do hear some parental opinions, which are surprisingly neutral. One mother says: 'We shouldn't blame the Americans for everything. There is something wrong with us too'." Jennifer Marin, a culture columnist from the Los Angeles Times
Los Angeles Times
The Los Angeles Times is a daily newspaper published in Los Angeles, California, since 1881. It was the second-largest metropolitan newspaper in circulation in the United States in 2008 and the fourth most widely distributed newspaper in the country....
, wrote at About.com
About.com
About.com is an online source for original information and advice. It is written in English, and is aimed primarily at North Americans. It is owned by The New York Times Company....
, that while it was innovative, informative and a noble experiment, the footage is "undistinguished and rough because the hands holding the cameras weren't skilled and the eyes framing the shots were not those of artists or keen observers." She thought that, with the exception of Mohammad, the boys lacked charisma, and that the film failed to capture the drama of living in a war-zone, due to the lack of a director calling the shots. Perigard said, "After the time you've invested [as a viewer], it’s not nearly satisfying enough. For all the questions this fascinating film raises, it might as well be written in sand."
Many reviewers noted the similarities between the Iraqi boys and those from Western cultures. Peter Scarlet, the Artistic Director at the Tribeca Film Festival, said, "What's fascinating about the film that resulted is how very familiar and ordinary these kids are – they're not really all that different from your own teenagers or the kids you went to school with. The kids of Baghdad High also open us up to a very different sense of life in Iraq than what we've been seeing on the nightly news for five years." The Huffington Post said, "previously it had been unfathomable that students in Baghdad might be experiencing the same ephemeral and narcissistic heartbreak as we are in the United States." Farhi and Nicholls noticed that the Iraqi students do the same things as American high school students, such as listening to rap music, trying to study without distractions, playing sports, becoming stressed over their final exams and acting silly with their friends. Perigard commented, "despite the cultural differences, Ali, Anmar, Hayder and Mohammad will seem instantly familiar to anyone who has spent time around a teenage boy. They like to wrestle each other, love Western music, dream big and have trouble buckling down in school."
The New York magazine
New York (magazine)
New York is a weekly magazine principally concerned with the life, culture, politics, and style of New York City. Founded by Milton Glaser and Clay Felker in 1968 as a competitor to The New Yorker, it was brasher and less polite than that magazine, and established itself as a cradle of New...
said that the film's premise of four high-school friends videotaping their senior year "sounds like a fluffy reality show"; Bill Weber of Slant Magazine
Slant Magazine
Slant Magazine is an online publication that features reviews of movies, music, TV, DVDs, theater, and video games, as well as interviews with actors, directors, and musicians. The site covers various film festivals like the New York Film Festival.- History :...
said, "putting the trials of MTV reality-show prima donnas in perspective, the middle-class quartet will be relatable to this BBC/HBO production's audience in their easy embrace of Western kid stuff ... Directors Ivan O'Mahoney and Laura Winter balance [portray] an everyday sense of the adolescents' wartime anxiety with the more commonplace juvenile relief." Similarly, The Huffington Post raised comparisons with MTV reality shows, but was pleased to see that the Iraqi boys did not play to the cameras because they had not been exposed to programmes such as Laguna Beach: The Real Orange County
Laguna Beach: The Real Orange County
Laguna Beach: The Real Orange County, often referred to simply as Laguna Beach, is a reality television series which originally aired on MTV from September 28, 2004 until November 16, 2006. It documents the lives of several teenagers living in Laguna Beach, an affluent seaside community located in...
or The Paper
The Paper (TV series)
The Paper is a reality television show on MTV. The show covers the lives of the Cypress Bay High School newspaper staff, focusing mostly on four senior editors...
. That juvenile relief was commented on by many; The Washington Post highlighted Mohammad's adoption of an unwelcome mouse in the house. Hale described a scene where Mohammad and Ali act like hostage and captor. "Suddenly Ali is holding a large knife. 'He's being naughty!' Mohammad says. Ali holds the knife near Mohammad and says, a little too unemotionally: 'Allah! This is the first hostage. I'm going to slaughter him this way.' Mohammad tells him to stop fooling around. Ali relents. 'O.K. He just got a presidential pardon. He can live'." Reuters also commented on this, and more banter between Ali and Mohammad. "Ali is shown making a pretend hostage video with Mohammad, and then teasing his friend for his smelly feet. 'If Chemical Ali really wanted to destroy the north he should have fired a rocket with Mohammad's socks in it'."
The depiction of the stark differences between Iraq and the Western world also received comments. Farhi described the school as having "all the charm of an abandoned prison", and continued with, "visiting a friend who lives a few hundred yards away involves running a potential gauntlet of kidnappers and snipers; getting to school on time means navigating military checkpoints. Before a big exam, teachers frisk their students for explosives," while Perigard said, "at night, their neighbourhoods are riddled with gunfire and explosions". In the New York Daily News, Patrick Huguenin wrote, "American teens wouldn't recognize other scenes showing how life slips into a heavily regulated series of checkpoints and curfews." Hale said, "The way the boys can tell without looking whether it's an Apache or a Chinook helicopter overhead, the way the curtains are always drawn, the level of physical contact and affection among the men ... would be alien to American sensibilities."
Accolades
The Boys from Baghdad High was well received from its initial screening. It was nominated for a Youth Jury Award at the 2007 Sheffield Doc/Fest, shortlisted for an Amnesty InternationalAmnesty International
Amnesty International is an international non-governmental organisation whose stated mission is "to conduct research and generate action to prevent and end grave abuses of human rights, and to demand justice for those whose rights have been violated."Following a publication of Peter Benenson's...
2008 UK Media Award in the category for Television Documentary and Docudramas, and the European Independent Film Festival named it the Best News and Current Affairs film. It was nominated for the Readers' Award in the Radio Times
Radio Times
Radio Times is a UK weekly television and radio programme listings magazine, owned by the BBC. It has been published since 1923 by BBC Magazines, which also provides an on-line listings service under the same title...
, and in May 2008 it won the Premiere Prize at the Sandford St. Martin Trust
Sandford St. Martin Trust
The Sandford St. Martin Trust is a United Kingdom-based religious charity established in 1978 that promotes excellence in religious broadcasting...
Awards, which acknowledges excellence in religious broadcasting. The Trust's chairman and former BBC Head of Religious Broadcasting Colin Morris
Colin Morris (Methodist minister)
The Rev'd Dr Colin Manley Morris is an English Methodist minister. Born into a mining family, after his ordination he served the Methodist Church in Zambia then Northern Rhodesia) for 15 years...
said of the documentary, "We saw the way faith breaks into secular life in the chaos of present day Iraq. Coming from different ethnic and religious backgrounds the boys showed that despite the war their daily preoccupations were much the same as those of teenage boys the world over – girlfriends, parents, sport, fashion, exams, music. Would their friendship survive? Ultimately the programme confronted British viewers with the question: 'What in God's name are we doing there? The film received a standing ovation from the audience at the Traverse City Film Festival, and at the Tribeca Film Festival, it was short-listed for the 2008 World Documentary Feature Competition, competing against eleven other non-fiction films for Best Documentary Film and Best New Documentary Filmmaker.
External links
- Baghdad High at HBO