Advertisement
Michelle Shephard: I think one of the frustrating things about the story over the years is that I had been writing so much about it and the debate in Canada really stayed the same. And I felt that it would be great if people could actually see him, decide for themselves, and he could tell his side of the story. That's why I wanted to do the documentary and I was lucky enough to meet up with Patrick and go from there.You've reported on this story since 2002, but you only got to speak with Omar in person for the first time earlier this year. What was that experience like?
Shephard: Being able to speak with him was the biggest challenge of the documentary because we had fought for so long to get access to him, and when he came back to Canada we assumed we'd be able to do these jailhouse interviews. We fought, but the Canadian government wouldn't allow us to do that. So it did take him getting bail to finally meet him, and we had a couple days with him. It was really rewarding to finally be able to ask him the questions that I know I've been dying to ask for many years. It was great for Canadians to be able to see him, too.
Advertisement
Shephard: I think, probably more than most people, I had a good idea of who he was just because, at least from a distance, I could watch him grow up over the years in Guantanamo. And together we'd interviewed so many people who'd had access to him. So we'd heard a lot of stories about him. And a lot of that was consistent with who he was. Probably what was most surprising is that, I thought after spending half of his life, essentially, in prison, maybe the first couple days of freedom—which was the time that we were with him—he would be completely overwhelmed. And he wasn't. And I think that's probably his survival mechanism kicking in. I think he learned over the years how to survive in prison and he was a lot more serene than I expected him to be.Reed: Yeah. I expected him to be pretty bitter. I mean how can you not be? He spent half his life in prison. He'd been tortured, he came back home to Canada and it took him a couple years before he could get out. And, in our case, he said he wanted to talk to us and he wasn't allowed to. But he was very chill, he was very relaxed. Some people who have seen the film will respond to that and think, Wow! This guy is almost like a philosopher, he's so centered, this is amazing. And other people will see it and say the guy is a charlatan. He's a survivor, if you want to be nice about it, or he's somebody who's pretty good at manipulating the media and knows how to be on camera.
Advertisement
Reed: It's a tough one. He also says in the film that he doesn't really like publicity. But he comes out and there's a scene in the film that a lot of people would have seen just in the media of him addressing this throng of reporters—which is scary for virtually everybody—and the guy looks like he's had handlers for his entire life. He's very charismatic and very relaxed, but there's this duality because, at the same time, he says, "I was reluctant to do it. I really just want to become a regular person and I really just wish all the attention would go away and I could move on with my life." Some people look at that and think, Well why are you so comfortable on camera then? So he's a contradictory guy who has lived a very extraordinary and difficult life.How did Omar feel about telling his story? Was he anxious or eager to do the interview?
Shephard: He didn't actually want to. There was a period when he was in prison and he agreed to do the interview, but when he actually got out, he didn't want to do the interview. It took us spending some time and convincing him. He says in the film, "My greatest wish would be to just disappear and become an average guy." As we said to him, "Well, that's not going to happen. At least not for a long time." But it did take some convincing to get him to speak. At first, he was pretty reluctant to talk. I would say it wasn't the easiest interview. We both interviewed him over the course of a couple days and we both have very different styles. I think in the back of my head I was thinking a lot of the time that this was someone whose been interrogated for so much of his life, which makes it hard to talk to him in some ways. Because you don't want to mimic the interrogator. At the same time, you want to get at the truths and you know that he probably knows how to answer questions. So it was kind of tricky.
Advertisement
Reed: I've made some films about child soldiers, particularly in Africa with General Romeo Dallaire. Within one documentary we do touch very briefly on Omar Khadr and [how] people seem to really get behind the issue of child soldiers in Africa, but when it becomes a Canadian, Omar Khadr, it becomes far trickier for a lot of people. Or they take a very strong stance either way, often negatively against him. So he was on my radar. But I didn't start this film coming from an activist perspective or thinking, This is going to change things. As a filmmaker, what really interested me about him is just the idea that everybody seemed to have an opinion on this guy. A very, very strong opinion often. And he's obviously lived a complicated life and has great notoriety. So it's just that opportunity to meet with him and then also meet with all the other people who surrounded his life and show the complexity, allow him to tell his own story, have his story challenged by other people who he's met and then let the audience decide. So my initial motivation was it's a great story and it's a complicated, polarizing figure. So let's explore that.
Advertisement
Shephard: I think so. Just from a very unscientific poll of people coming up to me, making comments, or emails you get. For so many years, the dial never moved on that story. And anytime I wrote about that story I would get the angriest emails. And sometimes, on the same story, from both ends—the far right and the far left. So there were always these two groups that had very strong opinions. And then a grey area in the middle. I think that press conference was probably the first time that the dial moved a little bit and people thought, Oh, well, maybe I don't have this story exactly right, or Maybe he's not quite the monster he's been portrayed to be.You interview a lot of very high-profile people, including Guantanamo's chief prosecutor at the time, a former CSIS official, and cell mates of Omar's. What challenges did you experience getting these people on camera?
Shephard: In some ways we were kind of lucky with the timing because enough time had passed in this case and [from the time of] his guilty plea and what happened in Guantanamo. I think some people were finally willing to tell the story—or their side of the story. We have someone who was at the firefight, one of the special forces soldiers there. He does talk on camera and we were really excited to get that interview, but he used a pseudonym, so there are still some sensitivities around the case.
Advertisement
Advertisement
Reed: It's not so much a political message, I think it's a human message. What we focused on, or what we discovered, is that the amount of people who were very intimately involved in Omar's case, in Guantanamo Bay, in the War on Terror, many of them were transformed or their opinions changed, largely because of Omar. In the sense that they could have strong opinions and principles about what they were doing when they were interrogating people, when they were basically doing these Kangaroo Courts in Guantanamo Bay, but then on top of it all, when you're dealing with the fact, you're looking across at somebody and he's 15 years old, and he speaks English and he reads similar magazines to you, and you start to think, This is weird. There's something not right about this. It's just one of those gut-level checks about I've got to look in the mirror and maybe reevaluate what I'm doing. So to me it's less a political thing. People who work with CSIS, people across the board, because of him as a kind of symbol, really did change their minds about things.Shephard: I think the only thing to add that is that you've heard over the years people who have talked in the political arena about him and what the comments were in that arena were so different from the people that actually know him and work with him. From the bureaucrats, from the former head of the counter-terrorism intelligence unit. There's always been that disconnect. So in that sense, I think that does come out. It wasn't our intention to bring that out in the film, but it does come out that he was a political pawn in a much greater drama.People have been following Omar's case in the news for more than a decade. Why do you think they should see the documentary?
Reed: I think people should see it largely because it's a great story and it forces you to ask basic questions about how you see the world. And whether you want to come at something from a position of simple judgement, or whether you want to open your mind and have your mind challenged, and possibly changed through the course of 90 minutes. In the same way that many of our characters in the film had their own lives changed when they experienced Omar, when they met him. I know a lot of family members who would've been very gung-ho, pro-War on Terror, and hearing Omar might change their minds about things. Probably not. Hearing somebody like the US military interrogator who is like the biggest true believer and tortured some guys and thought he was doing things to get revenge, and seeing that guy change throughout the course of the film and say, "I look at life in a different way now," that would convince them to reconsider things.Shephard: I think that's why his story has always been so interesting. His own story, of course, is compelling and incredibly surreal. But he represents so much more. He represents how the world really changed after 9/11 in incredible ways. Every little part of his story has a piece of that. So, I think, while of course it's a documentary about Omar Khadr and his saga, it really is about the last 10 years.Omar's Guantanamo conviction is currently being appealed in the US. So the film ends and you naturally want some kind of conclusion, but there isn't really one yet. What do you think is next for Omar?
Shephard: From what I understand he's now off to university. Still trying his best to fly below the radar and stay out of the attention.Reed: I think one of the most touching things, for me, at the end of the film is just his admission, "What am I going to do next?" It's not the usual question that people who are in their mid-20s ask about what kind of job am I going to get? Or where I'm going to go? Am I going to hang out with my friends? It's the larger question about 'What am I going to do next when I can actually finally relax and crawl under my bed and cry? And deal with what has actually happened to me? Not perform for the camera, not be a symbol, just be myself.' And that's probably going to be a pretty difficult, messy place to be for a while.