{"id":648225,"date":"2026-11-01T23:02:09","date_gmt":"2026-11-01T23:02:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/648225\/"},"modified":"2026-11-01T23:02:09","modified_gmt":"2026-11-01T23:02:09","slug":"james-longley-on-mohabat-and-project-about-the-rohingya-genocide","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/648225\/","title":{"rendered":"James Longley on ‘Mohabat’ and Project About the Rohingya Genocide"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tDouble Oscar nominee James Longley<\/a>, who won the top award<\/a> at Ji.hlava Documentary Film Festival<\/a> on Saturday with \u201cMohabat<\/a>,\u201d will focus next on the Rohingya genocide. <\/p>\n

\n\tLongley \u2013 who was Oscar nominated for \u201cIraq in Fragments\u201d and \u201cSari\u2019s Mother\u201d \u2013 tells Variety at the Czech event, \u201cI\u2019ve already filmed act one of this project, working with Diane Weyermann [who died in 2021<\/a>] at Participant Media, when they were still around [the company was shut down in 2024]. Next year marks the 10th anniversary of the 2017 genocide.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tHe adds, \u201c[It\u2019s] a genocide that\u2019s formally recognized as such by the United States, the EU and the British government, yet, surprisingly, no documentary feature has been produced on this subject. I\u2019m uniquely prepared to make that film.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tLongley doesn\u2019t mind being an outsider. His latest, \u201cMohabat,\u201d is set in Afghanistan.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI\u2019m not attempting to become Afghan. I\u2019m trying to help non-Afghans understand Afghanistan better. After fighting a war in their country for 20 years, this seems like the least we can do,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

\n\tHe arrived \u201cwith a camera in my hand instead of a gun\u201d and was treated as a guest, not an enemy.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI went to their country with the sincere goal of telling their stories, so I was accepted and afforded patience.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI cannot describe what an honor it has been for me to live and work alongside the Afghan people, who are brave and pure of heart in a way most Americans could take a good lesson from.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tHis protagonist, 12-year-old Mohabat, tries to hold his family together under Taliban rule after a U.S. drone kills his father while he\u2019s out hunting.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThis happened during the first Trump administration, when Mike Pompeo was in charge of the drone program,\u201d says Longley.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cDuring the 20-year war, such events were common and untold numbers of civilians were killed and forgotten far from the foreign journalists in Kabul. Mohabat did not want his father to be forgotten, and so he stuck with us patiently throughout two years of filming.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tDuring location scouting, the team visited orphanages filled with children who had lost their parents in the war.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThe sons of Afghan policemen martyred in Taliban suicide bombings share their bread with the sons of martyred Taliban fighters. Many of them wanted to tell their stories. That was never an issue,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cMohabat believed that we would do justice to the memory of his father, a poor man with a wife and seven children, who worked as a tea seller in a large market on the edge of Kabul.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tHe adds: \u201cElham, one of Mohabat\u2019s friends, told us specifically that he was waiting for a foreign journalist to come and talk to them about what they had seen during the war and what they thought about it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tLongley is no stranger to making films \u201cabout young people and for young people,\u201d such as \u201cIraq in Fragments,\u201d \u201cAngels Are Made of Light\u201d and now \u201cMohabat.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWhen we are children, we experience the world most directly \u2013 and for the first time. When I direct a documentary in Afghanistan, Iraq or Gaza and show it to a Western audience, I know I\u2019m taking them to a new place. In this situation, it\u2019s most appropriate to give them a child\u2019s perspective because [they\u2019re] like a child in those countries, experiencing something new.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI\u2019ve included many adults in my documentaries, but most audience members never remember them after watching the film.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tHe\u2019s influenced by Vittorio De Sica, Abbas Kiarostami, Majid Majidi, Fran\u00e7ois Truffaut and other directors who \u201ctreat the lives of their child characters with great seriousness.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThis can also work in documentaries,\u201d he emphasizes. Especially when working in a \u201crestrictive space.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cMaking a film in Afghanistan, either during the war or under the Taliban, with a child as the main protagonist doesn\u2019t make the job more difficult; it makes it much easier. You\u2019ll get permission to make a film about a kid a 100 times before you will get permission to make a film about an adult.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tHe wasn\u2019t able to film women, however.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIt would have caused a local scandal if one of the village women had appeared in our film. She would never have been able to live it down. The issue is not whether women can talk; it\u2019s more that their neighbors would never stop talking about it,\u201d he observes.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cPlenty of Afghan women are making their own films in secret on their iPhones, so I didn\u2019t feel it was necessary to duplicate their efforts. I\u2019m in no position to make a film about Afghan women, and meanwhile, Afghan women filmmakers are in no position to make the kind of film we made in \u2018Mohabat.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tHe ended up joining forces with Alex Gibney<\/a>, who is credited as a producer alongside Longley and Mohammad Sharif Hotak.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cAlex saw \u2018Angels Are Made of Light\u2019 and liked it. When I asked him if he would like to produce a film with me about life in Afghanistan under the Taliban, he immediately said yes.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIt\u2019s been a joy working with him, mostly because he\u2019s the best documentary producer alive and also a deeply intelligent person. This kind of collaboration and level of trust is a dream for any filmmaker.\u201d <\/p>\n

\n\tHe also praises Hotak, who lived just down the road from the villages where they filmed.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cHis familiarity with the place and the people was the key to making the movie. He grew up experiencing the same realities of war as the children in the film, so he could relate to them directly.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tFinding a personal angle is crucial for Longley, regardless of where he\u2019s heading.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI see all films and media as reflecting the politics around which they were made and the politics of those who made them. Corporate news media make products that aligns with the politics of their owners and advertisers. I make films that reflect my own politics, which are pro-human and anti-war,\u201d he notes.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI suspect that my films are in direct conflict with almost everything you will see on television, but I can\u2019t say for sure \u2013 I\u2019ve never owned a TV. I don\u2019t care about what most of those people have to say.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Double Oscar nominee James Longley, who won the top award at Ji.hlava Documentary Film Festival on Saturday with…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":648226,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[256752,6332,156,317619,72769,317620,409,111,139,69],"class_list":["post-648225","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-alex-gibney","tag-documentaries-to-watch","tag-entertainment","tag-james-longley","tag-ji-hlava-documentary-film-festival","tag-mohabat","tag-movies","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/648225","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=648225"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/648225\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/648226"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=648225"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=648225"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=648225"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}