Interview: Nina Davenport (Operation Filmmaker)

[Note: This interview was originally published during our coverage of the 2007 AFI Festival.]

This intriguing documentary about good intentions gone wrong is about Muthana Mohamed, a young Iraqi film student, who has been given a golden opportunity to escape the war and be part of actor/director Liev Schreiber’s film (Everything Is Illuminated) in Prague. Operation Filmmaker raises questions about the film maker’s responsibility to “real” people in general in an age where reality shows get people to sign away their rights to be part of the Hollywood dream.

After his stint as a PA, Muthana is expected to return to Iraq but as the situation in Iraq worsens, he decides to stay without any money to everybody’s obvious disappointment – a Hollywood ending this is not. The cast and crew return to Hollywood without any consideration or responsibility for the young man except for Nina Davenport who was there to document his journey. 

A  filmmaker with a dilemma, Davenport tries her best in giving an honest portrayal of the young man, but the longer she stays with him (waiting for an ending to her film like Capote did for “In Cold Blood”) the fuzzier the docu-subject gets. After investing himself in his “film career”, Muthana gets a reality check from afar: pondering his own existance while rooted in the UK and in the same measure wondering how his the plight of his country might turn out.   

Part of the doc selections in the Intl Documentary Competition section at the AFI Film Festival, I interviewed Nina Davenport at Arclight Cinema in Hollywood.

Yama Rahimi: What made you become a filmmaker?
Nina Davenport: I studied filmmaking at Harvard College which has a great program for documentary film program for undergraduates. Before that I studied photography that influenced my style of filmmaking where I shoot and edit my own films without anybody’s help.

YR: How did you get involved in Operation Filmmaker?
ND: The producer David Schisgall who’s a friend and studied with me at Harvard did the MTV piece about Muthana Mohmad (the subject of the film) that Liev Schreiber saw. He liked my previous work and sent me to the first shoot which was a work for hire to see if there’s anything interesting or not. When the first conflict appeared on the set, I thought there was an interesting film there.

YR: So at first you had no intention to spend 9 months with Muthana?
ND: It was actually more than 9 months. It was almost a year and half. No I did not. Had I known what I was getting into and how complicated, confusing, exhausting and long it was going to be, I probably wouldn’t have done it but that’s the beauty of documentary that things unfold and change as it happens rather planning and creating conflict like you do in fiction.

YR: For me it was a great example of good intentions gone wrong. It makes you question the responsibility of the filmmaker. Did you know the original contract between Liev and Muthana?
ND: The intention was for Muthana to go back to Bagdad and make films but the situation in Iraq worsened and Muthana didn’t want to go back. Liev didn’t have any other plans beyond that because he was under the pressure to make his first film. That’s partly where I felt morally responsible because I felt they kind of dropped the ball and I had to pick up where they left off. I don’t hold it against them because given how things unfolded and how difficult Muthana was.

YR: I know it was a golden opportunity for Muthana to be on a Hollywood set but you could see his fear that he had to no stability nor long term security. Basically without security, the opportunity doesn’t mean much when there’s bigger issues at stake.
ND: In a way it’s the story of a refugee. This is what people deal with all the time who don’t have secure visa statuses. This constant underlying anxiety and threat to leave the country. It’s a difficult situation to be in. It made me feel really bad for him. Of course he didn’t want to go back because young people want to go where the opportunity is. There was a line that I had to cut out where Elijah Wood says that it’s possible we have given him a taste of he might have and that’s it.