Langan’s latest documentary, Mission Accomplished, has been shown on BBC4 and BBC2 and is due for cinema release. The 90-minute documentary focuses on life seven months after the Bush administration declared combat war in Iraq to be over. From November 2003 to February 2004, Langan lived in the notorious Sunni Triangle, which includes Fallujah, Baghdad and towns such as Ramadi, investigating what life is really like in the newly occupied territory and tracking unrest with the American occupation. Langan gets extraordinary access to the people affected, moving between resistance fighters, the American troops – both patrolling and taking part in operations – and Iraqi civilians. The documentary includes footage of the US 28th Combat Surgical Hospital in Baghdad, which Langan describes as, “like something out of a Vietnam movie”, a suicide bomb on an American base and interviews with ex-prisoners and their families outside the notorious Abu Ghraib prison, who make allegations of sexual torture in the documentary long before they were widely reported in the news.
Although sympathetic to the US soldiers on the ground, the documentary highlights the fundamental mistakes made by the US administration in Iraq and how the heavy-handed counter-insurgency tactics actually infuriated the residents and turned an underground Sunni resistance into a popular uprising.
Langan explains his reasons for making the film: “Having previously filmed in the Middle East with documentaries such as Langan Investigates, where I travelled through Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq and Gaza, I know quite a few people in the region, and friends of mine in Iraq were advising me that the post-war construction was problematic and, as a result, there was a growing uprising that should be reported on.”
But funding for the documentary was an sticking point. “Ironically,” he explains, “and despite the fact that I’d made 12 films already, and that the Iraq film eventually went on to receive critical acclaim, I couldn’t get TV funding to start with. When I proposed the idea last year for a documentary on the simmering insurgency conflict in Iraq, I was turned down by every broadcaster in Britain.
“My idea was to get the first interviews with members of the Iraqi resistance, because I thought it was important to understand what was happening. But I was told ‘the war was over’ and that everyone was either bored by Baghdad, or that I was wrong and that there was no real resistance, just the left-overs of the Ba’ath Regime. So I decided to go for myself, uncommissioned, although GQ magazine paid for my flight and a few weeks’ hotel expenses. I stayed in Iraq for three months, and when I got back I sold the film to the BBC, who paid for the edit. Once it was broadcast it received rave reviews.”
Natural course
Langan doesn’t set out to get a message across when he makes his films. Instead, his approach is to make films that look at what is really going on in the parts of the world featured on the news. “I like to let the film take a more natural course and be influenced by events on the ground. I also let people speak for themselves, and if there’s ever any message, it’s theirs – not mine. In that sense, the message, or conclusion, only comes about by what I’ve discovered on my journey.
“With Mission Accomplished, my initial aim was to get inside the resistance because, while they were in the news every day, no one really knew what was going on in their minds or why they were fighting. But when I got to Iraq, things changed slightly. I did manage to speak to the resistance, but I also spent months with local Iraqi civilians and American soldiers. My film is really about individuals, and how they’re affected by events. If there is a message, it’s that the counter-insurgency tactics employed by the Americans have made things worse – and in towns such as Fallujah and Ramadi they have created the popular revolt. The torture at Abu Ghraib did exactly the same.” In the film, Langan goes on patrol with American soldiers, who he bonds with, but at the same time he sees how they’re making things worse for the locals and themselves. “Soldiers actually confess to hating the locals,” says Langan. The film also highlights how the war was justified on false grounds – ie, no WMD – and points out that while there were no foreign terrorists in Iraq before the war, it has now become the new frontline for international jihad due to the occupation.
“The US medics actually point out that the American public has been misled,” says Langan. “In fact, one message that comes out over time is the level of misleading information that surrounds Iraq. In the end, it feels as though the situation is doomed, and that everyone is caught up in a worsening cycle of violence.”
Langan believes that, despite 24-hour news channels, documentary can contribute something significant to our understanding of events beyond what we see on the news. “Documentaries can provide insight and investigations that news no longer does,” he says, “simply by devoting much more time to a story. I spent three months on this one film. News, however, spends one or two days and has to cover strictly news events. That’s why we see so many car bombs and explosions, but we rarely get to understand why they’re happening. It also helped that I went in on my own and filmed the documentary myself. This made it much easier for me to travel through the Sunni Triangle and get inside the resistance. It would have been much harder for a big crew.”
Despite ongoing events in Iraq, Langan believes he made Mission Accomplished at the right time. “It is now incredibly dangerous,” he explains, “and I would not have been able to make this documentary in the present climate.”
Langan started his career as a journalist on the Mail on Sunday in 1993. He has written for a wide range of publications, including Arena, Esquire, the Guardian and the Independent. In 1997 his investigative journalism style led him into television documentaries, when the BBC asked him to film a story he was researching for a newspaper. He went in search of four Western tourists who had been kidnapped in Kashmir and ended up spending six months there, making a three-part series for the BBC called Nightmare in Paradise, part of the BBC’s Video Diaries strand.
“All my films have followed that style,” says Langan. “I make personal films, shot on a small camera that allows me to gain access and get close up, because it’s less formal and threatening than turning up with a crew. Also, because I spend so much time on a story, I don’t need to set things up before I leave London, like most documentary producers do. “I am probably most proud of my Kashmir films. They were my first and I just got on with life and filmed the experience. By concentrating on searching for the hostages and getting to the bottom of the story, I forgot about making the programme. All I did was film myself going about my task.
“Having said that, I also liked my two films on the Taliban’s regime in Afghanistan: Kabul Vice and Tea with the Taliban, as they portrayed the country and the Taliban in a more human light compared with the news hysteria of the time. And, in fact, I’m also proud of my Iraq film – because everyone turned it down and told me to forget it, yet it got amazing reviews. The Evening Standard claimed it changed their mind on the war and The Sunday Times called it, “a brilliant, brave and humane piece of journalism.”
Langan has been inspired by the people he has met in the course of making his documentaries: “I’ve been to Kashmir, Afghanistan, Argentina, Mexico, Iraq… all over the place, often during real crises and times of intense suffering. But wherever I’ve gone, I’ve met people who have shown me great kindness and I see such humanity. That’s what inspires me the most. The most uninspiring part is coming back to London and dealing with people in TV.”
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Rachel GibbsAfter working in PR in London for several years, Rachel Gibbs studied journalism with the London School of Journalism, and is now working as a freelance journalist covering a wide range of topics, including media and travel. She can be contacted at gibbs_freelance@yahoo.com |