Reliving the unwarranted suffering that innocent people have long experienced by international governments can be an emotionally daunting, but equally informative, experience for film audiences around the world. The new drama, ‘I Am Gitmo,’ is one such feature that chronicles the torture that detainees have endured while wrongfully being held prisoner at Guantanamo Bay, especially in the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 attacks.
The new movie is inspired in part by the international best-selling 2015 book, ‘Guantanamo Diary.’ The book was written by Mohamedou ould Slahi, who is a former prisoner at the military prison. The book was notable upon its release for being the first and only diary penned by a still-imprisoned Guantanamo detainee. He was released from the prison the year following the book’s distribution.
Seven hundred and eighty men and boys, all of whom are Muslim, have been imprisoned at Guantanamo, like Slahi, since its opening in January 2002. Out of those detainees, 86 percent were sold to the CIA and U.S. government for a large bounty.
Of the 780 prisoners, 30 are still currently imprisoned at Guantanamo. Out of all the hundreds of men renditioned to the prison, only eight were convicted of any crimes, four of whom had those convictions reversed.
Phillipe Diaz wrote, directed and produced ‘I Am Gitmo.’ The film is presented in English, Arabic and Dari with English captions. The drama stars Sammy Sheik, Eric Pierpoint, Paul Kampf, Sean O’Bryan, Hamzah Saman, Chico Brown, Kent Harper and Iyad Hajjaj.
‘I Am Gitmo’ had its World Premiere at the Marbella International Film Festival in Spain, where it served as the Closing Night Film. The project was nominated for Best Film and Best Director, and won Best Actor, at the festival. The feature then had its U.S. Festival Premiere at New York City’s Socially Relevant Film Festival, where it won a Jury Special Award.
‘I Am Gitmo’ is now playing at the Cinema Village theater in New York City, and is opening tomorrow, Friday, May 3 at the Laemmle Monica Film Center in Santa Monica, courtesy of Cinema Libre Studio. The movie’s theatrical release comes as pressure increases for the prison’s eventual closure.
Set in 2002, following the events of 9/11, ‘I Am Gitmo’ follows Gamel Sadek (Sheik), an Egyptian schoolteacher living in Afghanistan with his family, as he’s wrongfully sold for a CIA bounty. As a result, he’s forcibly brought to Bagram Air Base under suspicion of terrorism.
Gamel is brutally interrogated and tortured there before being flown to Guantanamo Bay. His status as an enemy combatant does not offer him protection at the prison under the Geneva Convention. While detained, he refuses to give up hope that he’ll eventually be released and reunited with his wife and their children, and refuses to stop fighting to prove his innocence.
Diaz generously took the time recently to talk about scribing, helming and producing ‘I Am Gitmo’ during an exclusive interview over Zoom. Among other things, the filmmaker discussed that he was in part inspired to make the feature after he read Slahi’s recollections of his time at the titular prison in ‘Guantanamo Diary.’ The filmmaker also praised Sheik’s immediate understanding of his character’s emotions and motivations when he auditioned for the role.
Film Factual (FF): You wrote the script for the new drama, ‘I Am Gitmo.’ What was the inspiration in scribing the screenplay for the film? What kind of research did you do while you were penning the script?
Phillipe Diaz (PD): It started a long time ago – years ago now – when we started to hear about people being tortured by the military and the CIA in Guantanamo. At the beginning, everybody thought, oh, that’s conspiracy, that’s not possible – the US doesn’t torture people.
I think the biggest shock for me was reading Mohamedou Ould Slahi’s book, ‘Guantanamo Diary.’ It described how he spent 13 years in Guantanamo without being convicted of anything. He wrote this detailed book – it’s 3000 pages – in which he explained what was done to him on a daily basis. That went out through his lawyer.
So when I read the book, I saw the list of means of torture that the U.S. used. When I realized he was clearly explaining that the torture was for every mate in in Guantanamo, I said, “Oh my God, that’s not possible.”
At the time, there were a lot of trial transcripts that you could read. There were also books written by detainees, as well as lawyers, interpreters and even soldiers, because so some soldiers were absolutely horrified of what was going on in Guantanamo.
So I read all of these transcripts and books and said, “My God, that is total insanity.” That was the beginning of my research.
After 9/11, the Bush administration was Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld, and they thought that they had to find these terrorists. So Donald Rumsfeld had the idea to print millions of leaflet that said, “Bring me a terrorist and we’ll will give you a lot of money.”
So they threw these millions of leaflets all over Afghanistan. As a result, everybody started to turn in anybody they could – their neighbors, their taxi drivers or whoever they could and received the money.
The worst part of that is that the CIA never checked into the guilt of these people. They sent them immediately into interrogation. They asked, “Where is Bin Laden?” Most people said, “Who?” They didn’t even know who Bin Laden was.
So the CIA said, “You don’t want to talk? Torture.” Since it was done at the CIA’s secret sites around the world, they could do anything they wanted. People died during that torture for no reason, since they were not connected with terrorism whatsoever.
The ones who the CIA thought had information but didn’t want to reveal that they were sent to Guantanamo. About 800 men were sent to Guantanamo, but they didn’t have any connection with terrorism, of course.
But at the time, the government didn’t care. They wanted to find guilty people that they could label terrorists, and even the worst of the worst terrorists, and that was it. So looking at all that, I said, “That’s total insanity, so we have to talk about it. We have to do something about it.” That’s why I decided to write this screenplay and make the movie.
It has to stop. It’s not like there were a few bad soldiers who did bad things to a few inmates; it was a systemic organization where every single inmate had to go through the same level of torture. That’s why I started to write the screenplay.
FF: In addition to writing the screenplay, you also directed the movie. How did scribing the script influence the way you approached helming the drama? What was your overall approach to directing the film?
PD: Well, we had a very, very small budget to make the film because no one in the U.S. will finance a movie about the torture in Guantanamo. Due to the extremely small budget, we shot in four weeks, which was very hard. So I knew that pretty much nobody would do it better on another level than I could, so I decided to direct it.
But what was the most important for me, in terms of approach, is putting the audience in the mind of the inmate who is tortured on the screen. I wanted the audience to ask themselves, what if it was happening to me? What if one day, the police come knocking on my door and say, “Come with us.” Then suddenly, I’m being asked questions about things that I don’t even know about, and I get tortured? How would I feel about it?
So as you see in the movie, when the main character is under the hood and he’s put in a box for mark execution, the camera is in the box. I did that because I want people to feel what that experience is like.
I worked with a UN reporter on human rights who went to Guantanamo. She was the only one authorized to go to Guantanamo, and she published this huge report explaining the abuse of detainee and torture.
While talking with her, she said “Your movie is important because we won many legal battles. I published this report. It was a bomb, of course, because of what we were saying about culture and abuse. While we won many battles, the government didn’t change one thing about its policy toward these men.”
There are still 30 men in Guantanamo. The worst part is that some of the 30 men have been cleared for release for a long time, since the government can’t find anything to prove they’re connected to terrorism. however, they’re still in Guantanamo.
Also, the ones who have been released can’t restart their lives. When you have been tortured for 10 or 20 years, they can’t restart their lives very easily.
They’re also all sent to other countries because the U.S. government made it clear to all of their countries of origin that they are the worst of the worst terrorists. So their country don’t want them back.
So they’re all sent to a country they don’t even know about without any money. They also don’t even have an ID anymore because they were stripped of their IDs.
So how can you restart life after being tortured for 10 or 20 years without an ID or money? I don’t know.
That’s what I wanted to try to attract attention on the plight of these man because we need to get reparation for them. That’s one of the most important things – they have to be able to at least try to restart life.
FF: ‘I Am Gitmo’ stars Sammy Sheik and Eric Pierpoint. What was the casting process like for the film?
PD: I knew Eric Pierpoint, who I think is a great actor. He’s the one who plays the interrogator. I kind of wrote the part for him because I needed someone who was the strong man but was also able to be relatable. That’s why I created this relationship with his daughter, who he tried to reconnect with. Of course, he put his career above their relationship all of his life, and he’s not very proud of it.
But in a way, he’s also proud of his work. He thinks he did something great for the United States of America, even though his daughter is totally against it. So I needed someone to showcase that, and I think he did a wonderful job.
For the main character of Gamel, I interviewed dozens of Arab-American actors of all shape and forms. I worked with them and gave them scenes to read and then the screenplay.
The only one who was really right on target was Sammy Sheik. Some actors were not really making the effort to understand when they were playing the scene. I was saying, “That’s not bad,” but Sammy was immediately right on target.
He immediately understood what this character was about, and he worked so hard after that. I was so happy to make the movie with him. He won the Best Actor award at the Marbella International Film Festival.
But apart from that, it was so interesting to work with him because he worked so much to immerse himself in this character. On screen, he cries twice when he’s in the box for the mock execution, and later when he receives the real letter from his wife – those were real tears. He was so involved in his character that it was a pleasure to work with him.
It was the same for Eric Pierpoint, who played John Anderson. He was so prepared and understood how this guy can function in his career and religious beliefs, and really immersed himself in that.
So every day on the set, it was a pleasure to work with them because they were always on target. We, of course, still had to work together, but I had very little to do to bring them back from somewhere else.
FF: The movie was shot in Santa Clarita. What was your experience of deciding to film, and eventually shooting, the feature on location in the Californian city?
PD: Well, that was the problem because as I said earlier, we had such a small budget that we could not do much. The movie starts in Afghanistan, as we see the main character living there with his family. It then moved to Bagram Air Base and then moved to Cuba. There is, of course, the scene with John in the U.S., as well.
So we had all of these locations, so we had to rebuild all of them. We shot some locations on stage in California. We had five different studios, including for the planes, which were real. We went to a museum of airplanes because we needed to find the planes of the time – the story takes place 22 years ago.
So everything was shot on stage. We rebuilt all the cells and we made the streets of Afghanistan. I think everything works.
I’m always in favor to shoot on location, if you can. But if you cannot, what is great in the studio is that you have many more facilities to shoot on. You also have different angles because you can move the wall. When you sit in a real cell its very small, so you are very limited in what you can do. So we had much more space to do what we had to do in the studio, as we built everything.
FF: Speaking about the small budget you had to shoot ‘I Am Gitmo,’ besides penning and helming ‘I Am Gitmo,’ you also served as a producer. Why did you decide to also produce the drama? How did you balance directing and producing the film throughout the production?
PD: Well, I asked my filmmaking partners and my wife, who is also one of the producers of the film, to help make the film. They worked a lot to make sure that I could concentrate on directing and not producing.
So I think producing was fine because of all the partners I have; I also have another partner who also stars in the movie as Officer Martin, who is the only good guy in Guantanamo. The actor, Chico Brown, had a great idea; he said, “Look, we are doing a movie on the detainees. So why don’t we bring former detainees here in the U.S. to help make this movie happen?
I thought it was brilliant, of course. I thought, let’s give them a chance to do something.
So he brought former members from the gangs in Los Angeles who had been in jail for a long time and were trying to rebuild their lives. We used these guys to build the sets and even act in the film in small parts, and they were all wonderful.
So that was a great part too because I had a lot of support. We had a huge team and everybody was so supportive because of the subject.
But it was very hard because I needed eight weeks to make this film and I only got four. (Diaz laughs.) So it was very hard, but at the end of the day, I think everybody did a great job.
FF: Cinema Libre Studio (released) ‘I Am Gitmo’ in theaters in New York City on April 26, and will also distribute the feature in L.A. tomorrow, Friday, May 3. What was the process like of securing the distribution for the movie?
PD: So we have our own distribution company that I created and still run – Cinema Libre Studio in Los Angeles, which is a company that’s now 33 years old. We specialize in distributing social issue-related documentaries and political films.
So we have a good experience of doing that. I think what the misconception a lot of people have is that it’s not difficult to distribute movies; they also think you will always find movie theaters who are ready to show your movies.
As you know, we opened in the Cinema Village in New York and are opening at the Lamelay Theatre in San Diego. After that, we put all of our movies on Blu-ray and on all VOD platform because that’s the main way to show movies now.
We are even creating and launching our own streaming platform. When we work with such companies as Amazon and Apple TV, they only send us five cents when they make $3 on a movie.
So for all of us and other filmmakers, maybe that doesn’t work. So we hope that from New York and L.A., it will spread a little bit around, and everyone can see, and learn from, this film.
Film Factual 