Operation Filmmaker (2008)

IRAQ STAR Director Nina Davenport illuminates Iraqi film student Muthana Mohmed's experience on the set of an American film production in Operation Filmmaker

Liev Schreiber sees an MTV report about Iraqi film student Muthana Mohmed, whose Baghdad school has been bombed. He invites Muthana to work on Everything Is Illuminated, shooting in Prague — a generous, liberal gesture. Then Nina Davenport begins to make this documentary, Operation Filmmaker, about Muthana on the set. But generous gestures (especially Davenport's) get challenged when Muthana's own plans complicate the experiment in liberalism. An exit strategy in Iraq? This self-aware study shows how hard it'll be. A-