9th Annual Film Festival: My Country, My Country

My Country, My Country (Iraq/USA), 2006

A film by Laura Poitras

(2012 MacArthur Genius Grant winner)

Nominee, Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature

The Middle East Studies Committee and the Khayrallah Program for Lebanese-American Studies is proud to present the 9th Annual Middle East Film Festival. This year’s theme is REVOLUTION!

This is the fourth and final documentary about the revolutionary changes that have taken place in the region with selections from Egypt, Lebanon, Iran and Iraq.  This film will be shown at 7 PM in the Erdahl Cloyd Theater in the D.H. Hill Library on NC State University’s campus.

9th Annual Middle East Film Festival

TOMORROW, Wednesday, November 6th

7pm at NC State University

Six months in Iraq, culminating in the national election on January 30, 2005. We watch logistic preparations for the election, with UN, US, Australian, and local personnel unsure if the election will be held as scheduled, bracing for violence and for world attention. We also cut back and forth to Dr. Riyadh, a Sunni physician who practices at the Adhamiya Free Clinic and prays at the Abu Hanifa Mosque. He’s an Iraqi Islamic Party candidate for the Baghdad Provincial Council; he visits Abu Ghraib prison and speaks out. We meet his wife and daughters: the family is cheerful, ironic, and droll. Will his party participate in the elections? Will he vote? Is his family safe?

My Country, My Country is the first film of a trilogy about post 9/11 America. The second film The Oath (2010) focused on Abu Jandal, Osama bin Laden’s former bodyguard, and Salim Hamdan, a prisoner at Guantanamo Bay Prison and the first man to face the controversial military commissions. The third film currently untitled focuses on spying and the NSA. As a result of the in-depth international research she conducted for this film, she was the subject of a New York Times detailing her connection to Edward Snowden, former contractor with the NSA.

Here is a quick teaser from the great article:

This past January, Laura Poitras received a curious e-mail from an anonymous stranger requesting her public encryption key. For almost two years, Poitras had been working on a documentary about surveillance, and she occasionally received queries from strangers. She replied to this one and sent her public key — allowing him or her to send an encrypted e-mail that only Poitras could open, with her private key — but she didn’t think much would come of it.

For more information on Laura and her work, check out her website.

Check out the trailer for My Country, My Country below.

We hope to see you for the final film TOMORROW night! Thank you all for your support in attending the 9th annual Middle East Film Festival!