ScreenFish

where faith and film are intertwined

ISIS

Sabaya – Rescued from ISIS

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The mission: go into a camp filled with Daesh (ISIS) supporters and rescue Yazidi girls and women held as sex slaves. Sabaya won the directing award for World Cinema Documentary for Hogir Hirori at the Sundance Film Festival. Billed as a docu-thriller, the film shines a light on the plight of thousands of young women and on people who are trying to aid them.

While fighting in Iraq, Daesh killed thousands of Yazidi men and took the Yazidi young women to serve as sex slaves (Sabaya). Some of the women have been held for five years. Now some of them are part of the 73,000 people held in the Al-Hol camp in Syria. We watch as Mahmud and Ziyad, two men from the Yazidi Home Center, aided by female infiltrators in the camp, make raids (usually at night) to liberate these women. The camp is filled with Daesh supporters (there are more in the surrounding countryside), so this is a hazardous undertaking. The men go in equipped basically with a phone and a handgun.

The film certainly has a thriller aspect with the forays into Al-Hol to find these women. It it also contrasts that tension with the daily life of Mahmud and his family—making meals, being together with children. Mahmud’s wife and mother help the rescued women transition back to the world of freedom before they are reunited with family.

The plight of the Yazidi has become an international cause. (A good film to learn about what has happened to this group is On Her Shoulders.) They are a minority within a minority. They are extremely insular, not accepting outsiders as part of their culture. That comes into play in one part of the film when one of the women rescued has a child who was fathered by a Daesh fighter.

We learn at the end of the film that the group saved 206 enslaved women, 52 with children. But 2000 still remain unfound.

This is an ongoing reminder of the inhumanity that is a part of war in general, and specifically as it is practiced by ISIS. While we may think battles have been won, the aftermath continues to be painful for many. That is clear in this film when at the beginning we hear an announcement on the radio that Daesh has been defeated in Syria, but as we see Mahmud and Ziyad on their raids we know that that defeat is less than final.

Religion (or more precisely, the exploitation of religious ideas) certainly plays a role in all of this. The reason Daesh uses to enslave these women is that because they are not Muslim, such treatment is permissible. That is not a general understanding within Islam. That is one of many examples of the ways that religious people misuse messages of goodwill to create malevolence.

Sabaya is opening in select theaters.

Photos courtesy of MTV Documentary Films.

On Her Shoulders – Nadia Murad Takes on the World

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“The world has only one border—the border of humanity.”

At 23 years old, Nadia Murad is doing amazing things—testifying before the Canadian House of Commons and the UN Security Council, addressing the UN General Assembly, meeting refugees, leading a memorial event in Berlin for a genocide. Although this all seems exciting, it is actually a burden she feels compelled to carry. On Her Shoulders is a look into a few months of Murad’s activities and the reason they are so important.

In 2014, ISIS declared that the Yazidis (a religious minority in northern Iraq) should be eliminated. They set out on a genocidal spree in which over 5000 people were killed in a few weeks and over 7000 women and children were captured and forced into sexual slavery and child soldiering. Murad was one of those captured. In all, eighteen members of her family were killed or enslaved. In time, she escaped and began to tell her story. She tells it not because she wants to relive it, but because she sees herself as the voice of all those still enslaved.

Filmmaker Alexandria Bombach followed Murad during the summer of 2016. We see her doing TV and radio interviews, meeting with members of Parliament and with UN officials, visiting refugee camps where many Yazidis live while awaiting countries that will take them in. We see her in the almost normal life that takes place between the public events she is part of. She is indeed a remarkable young woman who has taken on a difficult and demanding role. Part of the difficulty is that the media (and official bodies like the committee in the House of Commons) focus on the sexual slavery that was forced on her. She is willing to talk about it, but she complains at one point in the film that they are always asking the wrong question. Few ever ask “What can be done for the Yazidis?”

Maybe it’s because I see so many films about refugees and genocide, but as I watched this there was a sense of saturation on these topics. Yes, we know there are genocides happening. Yes, we know people have been driven from their homes with little hope of finding a place in the world to accept them. Do we need to see it yet again?

The answer to that is “Yes.” Yes, we do need to hear Nadia Murad’s story, because it is not just her story, but the story of thousands of others. Yes, we do need to hear the ugly truths of genocide. Yes, we do need to see the hardship of life in a refugee camp. Because we see and hear of so much suffering like this, we may feel overwhelmed. Our hearts can become hard, our souls calloused. That is why we need to see stories like Nadia Murad’s. We need to open our hearts. We need to care.

[Late news: Nadia Murad shares this years Nobel Peace Prize.]

Photos courtesy of Oscilloscope Laboratories

Breakthrough S2: Ep 1 and 2 – Protect Thyself

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Eighteen months ago, Brian Grazer and Ron Howard decided to spearhead a series on National Geographic Channel involving advances in scientific technology.  Entitled Breakthrough, each episode was created by a specific director and tackled a unique aspect of how science could help society in general. The series was recently renewed for a second season (10PM/9 CT on Tuesdays), providing the viewing audience six more glimpses into a world where science meets life head-on.

The first episode aired last week and centered around an issue many people deal with on a daily basis: addiction.  This doesn’t necessarily refer to drugs or tobacco, but can also refer to cell phone usage, selfies, or other items/hobbies that become “something more” to a person.  There are numerous ways addictions can be dealt with, but the episode focused on an experimental technique—psychedelic drugs such as LSD, Ibogaine, or Psilocybin (magic mushrooms).  The treatment is not for all, that’s for sure—but in the three cases shown, director David Lowery (Pete’s Dragon) made the treatment process look absolutely spellbinding.  The episode was definitely not what I expected, but was intriguing nevertheless.

Cyber terror was the subject of the second episode—an issue many of us summarily dismiss as something that can’t happen to us.  Target doesn’t think so after seeing their online system compromised a number of years ago with millions of credit card numbers exposed for the world to use.  It doesn’t take a lot to break into a computer – a simple USB drive can wreak all sorts of havoc.  However, there are white hat hackers who legally help companies secure their networks by attempting to break into them.  They have lots of work to do—major companies’ detection rate of cyberattacks is only 6%, and when they do find something, it takes seven months to find it.   In fact, by 2019, cyberattacks will cost the global economy $2 trillion dollars. It needs to be fixed now.

To make things worse, director Steven Hoggard (Inside the Green Berets) reveals that cybercriminals (black hat hackers) are using encryption-based devices to recruit people into terrorist groups such as ISIS. Some have even been able to hack into US Central Command!  Some journalists in the UK havegone undercover to help stop this from occurring, using a similar technique to how criminals were caught on the show To Catch a Predator.  Do they always succeed?  Not quite. But stopping one attack is better than none.  That’s why it’s always important to protect oneself from the attacks of enemies who cannot be seen.  It sounds eerily like what Paul told the church in Ephesus when describing the armor of God.  The various components—helmet, breastplate, sword, and other elements—protect a Christian from the attacks of the devil and his minions (see Ephesians 6:11-20). Protection can be a good thing—we just need to be aware of the problem and prepare accordingly.

Heaven or Hell – The Story of God With Morgan Freeman S2E2

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(Photo Credit: National Geographic/ Savas Georgalis)

Often when we don’t have a really good clue about something, we tend to make caricatures about it.  One good example of this involves the concepts of heaven and hell. Hell is often portrayed as a massive cave filled with fire, red minions, and Satan himself (bifurcated tail and hayfork at the ready). Heaven, on the other hand, is full of clouds with Saint Peter outside a gate, looking at a large book to see if people (and other animals) should be allowed inside.  But what is heaven and hell like from a spiritual perspective? In the second episode of The Story of God with Morgan Freeman (Monday, 9PM/8CT Nat Geo), the focus is the afterlife—and it seems to bring up more questions than provide answers.

Of course, we can look up to the stars and get a sense of wonder and awe, or consider hell as a fearful place, as Freeman did growing up.  The question becomes a simple one: “How have these unseen places changed the way we live our lives on Earth?” In the episode, he takes a look at a number of different perspectives—the Cherokee Indian version that mimics reincarnation; the Ethiopian church’s attempt to exorcise demons to eliminate hell on earth; a Pentecostal church bringing heaven to earth via speaking in tongues; a Hindu king’s attempt to mimic heaven in the form of Angkor Wat; Assyrian Christians escaping Iraq, only to move to Syria and face a worse life dealing with ISIS; and Mayan cenotes where heaven is found in underwater caverns (see top picture).

(Photo Credit: National Geographic/Reza Riazi)

The focus of the episode is more along the lines of heaven and hell being a reality here and now. Is heaven a place on earth in a form outside of that 1980’s song by Belinda Carlisle? Can we make life so bad that hell cannot be conceived of as being any worse?  It’s difficult to tell, as there really isn’t an in-depth explanation of what some faiths believe (specifically Christianity, although it is given more attention here than in any episode of The Story of God with Morgan Freeman so far). Since people cannot typically come back from either location, all we have to work with is the here and now.

That brings us to the final example of the program—a lady named Krista Gorman who, while having her daughter, lost her pulse for eight minutes and had an experience of going to heaven—“my heaven,” as she put it, filled with waterfalls,  green hills, and angels flanking her sides. Krista was asked by an angel if she wanted to return to earth, and when she said yes, everything went in reverse and she returned to the hospital bed she was originally on.  When asked what her religion was by Freeman, Krista responded, “My religion is love.” It seems to be an anti-climactic ending to what could have been a fantastic episode. Instead, I’m not sure if it leaves the viewer wanting to learn and/or discover more.

If heaven is simply love, as Freeman notes to end the episode, we obviously don’t experience it enough in the lives we live.  We’re too busy with work, kids, politics, and other outside obligations to really enjoy life. There has to be something more, something beyond the tangible and physical. The Bible talks about both heaven and hell quite extensively within its covers, but both are a bit nebulous. Hell is a place where the presence of God refuses to inhabit, depicted in Revelation as a lake of burning fire where torment occurs for eternity (see 20:14-15).  Heaven, on the other hand, is full of splendor and glory, having a distinct size (1500 miles wide x 1500 miles long x 1500 miles high), lots of gold and precious jewels, trees for healing, water of life from God’s throne, and gates fashioned out of individual pearls (see Revelation 21:9-22:5).  It sounds incredible, but there’s one thing in common between the two places—something called the Book of Life. It’s pretty simple—if a person’s name is in there, they can enter heaven.  If not, hell. A person gets their name in there, according to Paul, by “declar[ing] … ‘Jesus is Lord’ and believ[ing] . that God raised him from the dead” (Romans 10:9-10).

“[Heaven and hell are] not just ideas; they’re part of us . . .  part of what we yearn to escape, but what we yearn to become,” says Freeman at the end of the episode. Death can be scary since few have seen what lies beyond. But the goal on earth is to get to the destination we want for ourselves. If we know the way, we can follow it.

Contract to Kill – Steven Seagal, Drones, & Worldwide Violence

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seagalSteven Seagal is so far above the law that he’s hard to kill.

Sorry, I just couldn’t help myself.

In Contract to Kill, Seagal plays John Harmon, he plays a dangerous man who is on deadly ground and out for justice.

Okay, seriously, I’ll stop now…

Harmon is a CIA guy who is also a DEA guy (is that a thing?) who investigates the cartel the way that they did in Sicario, and finds himself tracking how the cartel is working with ISIS to smuggle weapons into the U.S. Of course, he can’t do it on his own, so he recruits his former girlfriend/wingman Zara Hayek (Jemma Dallender) and a drone-happy technician, Matthew Sharp (Russell Wong), to figure out how to connect Istanbul to Mexico. It’s just that Harmon’s tactics might not exactly be above board, so he has to “do his thing.”

The thesis statement occurs early when Hayek says, “We all know that devout believers, real believers, have nothing to do with the rise in violence around the world, but that doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t do anything to try and stop it.” I’m not sure that actually takes away from the overall xenophobia, but the line was included absolutely on purpose.

Still, the bulk of the film seems to point us toward a world where everyone who isn’t our friend is our enemy. It would almost appear that everyone who doesn’t look like us is an enemy. And that’s dangerous enough, in a film that’s well put together.

Unfortunately, the film never takes off, and somehow, someone still made the executive decision to let the film hit theaters today. Instead of the more recent string of films that have been direct-to-DVD, this film appears to be marked for death as it were. Maybe it never works because Seagal seems to be grunting his way through lines he’s said before, or because the hand-to-hand combat we expect from Seagal doesn’t feature prominently, or because there’s just no real way to make a movie that plays with drone strikes all that engaging.

Unless you’re the biggest Seagal fan ever, I’d leave this one out of reach.