Nina Davenport's unapologetically cunning doc exceeds the sum of its parts to become almost unmanageably allegorical and even an indictment of its own shock-and-awe premise.
Comment
08/24/09
Operation Filmmaker (2008)
90
%
Tomatometer
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Reviews Counted:29
Fresh:26
Rotten:3
Average Rating:7.2/10
Consensus: Operation Filmmaker is a darkly funny, ironic tale of a cross-cultural exchange gone wrong.
Runtime: 1 hr 35 mins
Genre: Education/General Interest
Synopsis: In the wake of "Operation Iraqi Freedom," American actor Liev Schreiber had an idealistic notion: to rescue an Iraqi film student from the rubble of his country and bring him to the West to intern... [More]
Director: Nina Davenport
Reviews for Operation Filmmaker
Particularly fascinating is the way in which it this documentary examines the filmmaker's relationship to the film's subject, and the role documentary filmmakers play in shaping their subjects' futures.
06/27/09
Click to read the article
04/23/09
If learning about other cultures shows that we're all basically alike, Operation Filmmaker is a reminder that foreign countries have their own share of nitwits, too.
07/25/08
The antagonism between filmmaker and subject reminds us that reality is never a passive still life, but a volatile entity with its own ideas on how it is to be represented.
07/24/08
Davenport focuses deep on the Hollywood do-gooder mentality and her own complicity in treating Mohmed as a symbol of the war and not as a flawed person.
07/18/08
It's fearless filmmaking. And the surprising observations about cultural differences and insights into the movie production process make the whole thing worthwhile.
07/17/08
What might have been a vanity project emerges as a surprisingly complicated morality tale.
06/30/08
Top CriticEveryone here comes out smelling bad -- that's why the film's so good.
06/20/08
This gut punch of a documentary will knock you for a loop.
06/13/08
An exit strategy in Iraq? This self-aware study shows how hard it'll be.
06/06/08
Veteran documentary filmmaker Nina Davenport parses an ill-conceived experiment in cross-cultural understanding that began with the best intentions.
06/06/08
The whole film could be seen a metaphor for America's misadventures in Iraq: Schreiber and company came in expecting flowers and sweets from a grateful native, and wound up in a quagmire.
06/06/08
A ruefully funny cautionary tale about cross-cultural tone-deafness.
06/06/08
You can bet Nina Davenport didn't set out to make a documentary as bracingly honest as the one she ended up with.
06/06/08
The film's parallels between Mohmed's travails and the Iraq war are forced, but overall this is a fascinating odyssey that never plays out in ways you would expect.
06/06/08
As the story of an exasperating, manipulative, lazy and entitled young man, it’s one for the books.
06/06/08
A blunt, bitterly ironic snapshot of cultural misinterpretation and personal hubris, Nina Davenport’s Operation Filmmaker slyly plumbs the motivations of indie Hollywood do-goodism for uncomfortable parallels to blinkered neocon nation-building.
06/05/08
Despite the dubious moral of the film and on-the-fly camera technique, it is interesting to watch the pathetic story unfold.
06/04/08
Engaging, provocative, and often discomforting, Operation Filmmaker reveals increasing tensions between Muthana and his would-be benefactors, including filmmaker Nina Davenport.
06/04/08
Latest News for Operation Filmmaker
September 01, 2009:
Critic's students give high marks to film about intern 
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