Filmmaker offers insider perspective on Iraqi life

Documentarian Laura Poitras (“Flag Wars”) made her latest film, “My Country, My Country,” which opens Friday, to help her understand what she sees as the contradictions of the U.S. involvement in the Iraq war.

“How do you talk about democracy and invade a country at the same time?” Poitras asks.

Because she didn’t have any contacts in Iraq, she e-mailed the U.S. military to request permission to film its non-combat nation-building work. When she was granted access, she went to Baghdad.

“Once there, I knew I couldn’t make a film just about the military,” Poitras says. “I was there about four weeks and was looking for characters. I had done a bunch of filming, but you can’t just wander around the streets of Baghdad. It’s too dangerous.”

Then she met Dr. Riyadh, an Iraqi medical doctor, father of six, Sunni political candidate and outspoken critic of the U.S. occupation, when she was filming an inspection he was involved in at the Abu Ghraib prison. “He was an advocate for these detainees,” she says. “Then he invited me to his clinic to film there. I knew after those two shoots, this guy was amazing. I lived with him and his family.”

Poitras believes working solo allowed her more access than if she had had a crew or translators with her.

“Nobody pulled me aside and asked me what I was doing,” she says. “I was able to work independently and travel. It gave me a kind of flexibility because I could get in a car, an airplane or helicopter without a crew and I didn’t have to vouch for anyone else. I had a digital video camera and a lot of wireless microphones so I could get audio.”

Poitras also says being a woman worked to her advantage, making her seem nonthreatening to both U.S. military officials and the Iraqis.

“There were some military meetings [I attended] where I didn’t have permission,” she says. “But in an environment like that, people assume you have been given permission.”

If she had been a Western man, Poitras says, Dr. Riyadh and his family wouldn’t have welcomed her into their home.

“I wouldn’t have been able to film any kind of footage of the family, which to me is the heart of the film.”

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-- Susan King