It’s not hard to understand what gave Liev Schreiber the idea; sure he’s an actor and filmmaker but still human like the rest of us. While prepping for production on Everything is Illuminated in 2004, Schreiber caught an MTV segment about Muthana Mohmed. A 25-year-old Iraqi film student whose school had been reduced to rubble, Mohmed seemed like a bright-eyed kid with potential that was being wasted in a war-torn city. Knowing that working on a film set would be a dream for any film student, much less one whose country was in the middle of civil war, Schreiber and one of his producers set Mohmed up in Prague as an intern on Everything is Illuminated. Documentarian Nina Davenport started hanging around to chronicle Mohmed’s transition and work. Operation Filmmaker is her chronicle of how things went so horrendously wrong.
Operation Filmmaker opened today in limited release after playing a number of festivals. The full-length review is at filmcritic.com.
