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Sam Kressner full bio of Sam Kressner It's 2003, one year after Omar Khadir's capture. Through a fuzzy, black-barred videotape -- recently declassified by the Canadian government -- the fifteen year old Guantánamo detainee, dressed in an orange jumpsuit, rocks back and forth in his chair. He cradles his head, wailing. Induced by excruciating psychological manipulation, deterioration, and ultimately complete degradation, Omar's muddled whine turns to childish plea. He cries out for his mother. The boy begs helplessly. All he wants is to return home.
During a 2002 firefight that resulted in the destruction of an Al Qaeda-linked house in Afghanistan, Omar was accused of having thrown a grenade in the direction of a medic, killing the Delta Force soldier. But the situation may not have been so clear-cut: For starters, conflicting forensic evidence reveals that Omar may have been too wounded to commit such an act. Then there is Omar's testimony, in which he details having been abandoned by his terrorist-linked father in the now decimated home and ordered to assist in building bombs to fight the Northern Alliance.The question posed in You Don't Like the Truth: 4 Days Inside Guantánamo 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 Guantánamo 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?Inter-cutting candid interviews with culled segments of Omar's non-violent, four-day interrogation, Montreal-based filmmakers Luc Côté and Patricio Henriquez play the edited product for a variety interviewees: Omar's pro-bono lawyers, former Guantánamo detainees, Omar's mother and sister, a former military 'enhanced interrogator', a host of Canadian/United States government officials, and a muckraking journalist. Muted in tone and rhetoric, the carefully modulated You Don't Like the Truth allows most of its experts to recount personal experiences and encounters with Omar as they exhort the dangers, ineffective intelligence, and dehumanizing practices by which the United States systemically obtains information post 9/11. The film's greatest asset though is the declassified footage, a first from Guantánamo. Upon the arrival of Canadian officials, Omar naturally seems naturally elated, believing he has been saved, so to speak, by his home government. One of the officials even refers to himself as a fellow Scarborough native.However when it becomes apparent that the three interrogators who came bearing a Subway sandwich and Coke are, in fact, merely there to extract information, Omar turns evasive. And, as Côté acknowledges in a filmed interview, it is as if the interrogators arrived only to check off a list of Omar's disclosures, so they may successfully return the pre-ordained answers to be handed into superiors. What we have here is bureaucracy at its most pernicious.We see how a boy who has endured extensive physical torture, abandonment, and alienation comes to terms with life entrapped in legal limbo. Oddly, the footage is not all that unnerving or disturbing to watch, but rather distancing -- almost Brechtian. Before exiting, one of the interrogators paradoxically remarks, "We can't do anything for you. Only you can help yourself." And then the distancing effect dawns on you. We, the American public, have become inured to the loss of Habeas Corpus. Perhaps that is what makes You Don't Like the Truth likely the most important film you will see this year. Tweet Comments: See more in: You Don't Like the Truth: 4 Days Inside Guantanamo Omar Khadr Luc Côté Patricio Henriquez Luc Côté Patricio Henriquez Newest Oldest Most Replies Most LikedAbout This Film from the AMC Movie Guide Don't Miss Take Shelter by Sam Kressner 50/50 by Jesse Hassenger My Joy by Chris Cabin Weekend (2011) by Chris Barsanti More from AMC Sites AMC Blogs AMC Movie Guide Filmsite Flashback Five - Your Favorite Tom Cruise Movies Tom Cruise Trivia Game Orlando Sentinel Calls Show One of Best of All Time; Gilligan Named A Top TV Showrunner Sign Up Today for the Breaking Bad Newsletter and Get All The Latest Delivered to Your Inbox What You're Saying About Why Don Cheats
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