You Don't Like the Truth: Four Days Inside Guantanamo
Surveillance footage, that show how Canadian agents interrogated 15-year-old Omar Khadr
Directed byLuc Côté
Patricio Henríquez
Release date
  • 2010 (2010)

You Don't Like The Truth: Four Days Inside Guantanamo is a 2010 documentary. The film focuses on the recorded interrogations of Canadian child soldier Omar Khadr, by Canadian intelligence personnel that took place over four days from February 13–16, 2003 while he was held at Guantanamo. It presents these with observations by his lawyers and former cell mates from the Bagram Theater Internment Facility and Guantanamo Bay detention camps.[1][2][3][4][5][6][7]

The film premiered at the Festival du nouveau cinéma in Montreal in October 2010.[1] The film was shown to Canadian parliamentarians in October 2010. Khadr's defence attorney's planned to show the film during their summation if Khadr's trial went forward.[8] According to the Montreal Gazette the film-makers Luc Côté and Patricio Henríquez also produced a series of short YouTube videos as a companion to the feature-length documentary.[2]

Summary

Omar Khadr was taken captive in Pakistan at the age of 15 and ultimately imprisoned at Guantanamo, charged with killing a US soldier.

Khadr was finally transferred into Canadian custody in late 2012. He was held in a maximum security prison and transferred in 2014 to a medium-security one. He was released in 2015.

Reception

Peter Bradshaw wrote in The Guardian,

His unseen interrogator here is a Canadian intelligence officer, evidently the lead officer in a team, permitted by the Americans to question the prisoner on the understanding that a friendly seeming fellow countryman might cause Khadr to open up and give the US valuable intelligence. So far from being a respite from torture, this insincere friendly chat is a hideous refinement of cruelty: a horrifying turn of the screw.[9]

According to Andrew O'Hehir wrote in Salon, "Khadr became a sort of ritual sacrifice by the Canadian government, an offering to its American allies and/or overlords."[10]

Sam Kressner wrote in Filmcritic.com:[11]

The question posed in You Don't Like the Truth: 4 Days Inside Guantanamo is not that of Omar's innocence. We will never know what truly happened. Rather, the crux of the film lies in the legal "black-hole" that Guantanamo detainees find themselves in. Is it possible to hold a man, let alone a child, accountable to the status of Prison of War, illegal under United Nations law since the days of the Nuremberg Trials?[11]

Awards

The film won the Special Jury Award at the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam.[12]

The film won an award for "best documentary about society" at the Prix Gémeaux on September 13, 2011.[13]

The film was nominated in the best documentary category for the 2010 Genie awards.[14] According to a September 27, 2011 review in the Film Journal, the film did not yet have a distributor in the United States, but was eligible for an Oscar nomination opening in New York City in September 2011.[5] It did not receive a nomination.

Politics

Shortly before the film's premiere, Canada lost its bid for one of the rotating seats on the United Nations Security Council. According to Rhéal Séguin, writing in The Globe and Mail, the filmmakers "are convinced one reason Canada failed to get a seat on the United Nations Security Council was because the federal government has been condemned by many countries for failing to respect Mr. Khadr's human rights and the provisions of the international convention on child soldiers."[3]

References

  1. 1 2 Bryn Weese (2010-10-17). "MPs get chance to view Khadr documentary". Toronto Sun. Archived from the original on 2010-10-20. Retrieved 2010-10-17. The documentary, You Don't Like The Truth: Four Days Inside Guantanamo, premiered at Montreal's Festival du Nouveau Cinema last week and will be played at Khadr's trial by his lawyers during their final arguments.
  2. 1 2 Brendan Kelly (2010-10-18). "Two filmmakers take footage of Omar Khadr interrogation to create YouTube videos and carry on to a feature documentary". Montreal Gazette. Archived from the original on 2010-10-31. Retrieved 2010-10-18. You Don't Like the Truth: 4 Days Inside Guantanamo couldn't be more timely. The core of this extraordinary feature documentary is the much-discussed video footage of interrogations of Omar Khadr by Canadian Security Intelligence Service agents that was made public following a Supreme Court of Canada ruling two years ago.
  3. 1 2 Rhéal Séguin (2010-10-17). "Khadr interrogation documentary could be aired in court". The Globe and Mail. Archived from the original on 2010-10-30. Retrieved 2010-10-18. Mr. Côté said Mr. Khadr's lawyers were poised to use the documentary as part of their plea before a military judge. Instead of a four-week trial, a short sentencing session is now expected to begin on Oct. 25.
  4. ↑ "Khadr documentary to be shown to MPs". CBC News. 2010-10-18. Archived from the original on 2010-10-21. Retrieved 2010-10-18. The documentary was turned down for film funding from both federal and provincial agencies and did not make the cut for other festivals across the country. It is scheduled to be screened at an Amsterdam film festival next month.
  5. 1 2 Maria Garcia (2011-09-27). "Film Review: You Don't Like the Truth: 4 Days Inside Guantanamo". Film Journal. Archived from the original on 2012-06-05. Retrieved 2011-09-27. The film's footage, culled from cameras mounted in the rooms at the prison where Khadr was interrogated by Canadian and U.S. authorities, constitutes the most disturbing images of any documentary released this year.
  6. ↑ Jeanette Catsoulis (2011-09-27). "A Blurry Look at the Child Prisoner of Guantánamo". The New York Times. Archived from the original on 2011-09-30. Retrieved 2011-09-28. Working from seven hours of recently declassified tapes, the Montreal-based filmmakers Luc Côté and Patricio Henríquez have assembled an even-tempered glimpse behind a very dark curtain. What we see is a blurry, black-streaked box, the faces of Mr. Khadr's Canadian interrogators hidden behind cartoonish smudges. This gives them a disturbingly jaunty look as they fiddle with an asthmatic air-conditioner and proffer cartons of fast food, their fake bonhomie soon descending into psychological cruelty.
  7. ↑ "Tonight's film: You Don't Like The Truth with special guests Luc Côté and Patricio Henríquez". Human Rights Watch Film Festival. 2011-02-23. Archived from the original on 2012-04-24. Retrieved 2011-11-18. Directors Luc Côté and Patricio Henríquez are joined by the Toronto Star's National Security Reporter, Michelle Shephard, and Human Rights Watch, Senior Counsel on Terrorism and Counterterrorism, Andrea Prasow, for tonight's screening of You Don't Like The Truth: 4 Days In Guantanamo.
  8. ↑ "New Khadr film may be played in court at Guantanamo". CTV News. 2010-10-24. Archived from the original on 2012-10-22. Retrieved 2010-10-24. "Canadians? Yeah, finally!" replied Khadr
  9. ↑ Peter Bradshaw (2011-10-07). "Four Days Inside Guantánamo – review". The Guardian. Retrieved 2011-10-07. mirror
  10. ↑ Andrew O'Hehir (2011-10-06). ""You Don't Like the Truth": Our first look at a Gitmo interrogation". Salon. Archived from the original on 2011-10-04. You won't see Khadr suffer physical torture on these surveillance tapes, although the interrogators rely on time-honored tactics of psychological abuse, alternately berating him and plying him with Big Macs. You will see a teenager who speaks idiomatic North American English, and who is obviously relieved to see fellow Canadians, whom he naively assumes have come to help him.
  11. 1 2 Sam Kressner (2011-09-29). "You Don't Like the Truth: 4 Days Inside Guantanamo". Filmcritic.com. Archived from the original on 2011-10-07. Retrieved 2011-10-07.
  12. ↑ "YOU DON'T LIKE THE TRUTH - 4 days inside Guantánamo". oppenheimer.mcgill.ca. 2011-02-16. Archived from the original on 2012-03-26. Retrieved 2011-06-23.
  13. ↑ "You Don't Like the Truth wins documentary prize at Gémeaux Awards". Montreal Gazette. 2011-09-14. Archived from the original on 2012-03-23. Retrieved 2011-09-14. Montreal filmmakers Luc Côté and Patricio Henríquez's deeply disturbing film You Don't Like the Truth: 4 Days Inside Guantanamo won as best documentary about society at the first Gémeaux Awards gala Tuesday night.
  14. ↑ "You Don't Like the Truth: 4 Days inside Guantanamo (2010): awards". Movies & TV Dept. The New York Times. 2011-09-27. Archived from the original on 2016-03-15. Retrieved 2011-09-28.
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