Palm Springs International Film Festival 2018 - Jirga
A former Australian soldier returns to Afghanistan to find the family of a civilian he accidentally killed and apologise to them, placing himself willingly at the mercy of the village justice system – the Jirga.
Interview with Writer/Director Benjamin Gilmour
Watch Jirga on Prime Video and SBS on demand
Congratulations! Why did you make your film?
The starting point with Jirga wasn't the desire to make a film, but rather to explore the subjects of peace and conflict in a way that would reach the widest possible audience. In my opinion, drama film is the most immersive and effective storytelling medium. Jirga was made as a commentary on the impact of war and the perils of answering violence with violence. It was inspired by months spent living among the Pashtun tribes over the border in Pakistan in 2005 and travelling through Afghanistan as a guest a few years after that, hearing countless stories of death, disease and destruction largely precipitated by Western occupation. It was also influenced by my work as a paramedic in Australia, treating veterans of the conflict living on the streets or in isolation with mental illness who, all to commonly, have committed suicide. As a human being I can't be indifferent to these problems. It's harder to be indifferent when you look these problems in the eye.
Imagine I’m a member of the audience. Why should I watch this film?
Because it will move you, and it will make you question your assumptions about war and our so-called 'enemies', it will challenge you and stay with you. Jirga will also delight and surprise you. It has suspense, mystery, and a superb soundtrack. There is a beauty in this film that audiences have really responded to. It reveals a side to Afghanistan and its people you're unlikely to see in the mainstream media. It will lift your heart and give you renewed hope in the possibility of peace and the survival of humanity.
How do personal and universal themes work in your film?
Jirga is a work of activism in the form of a drama film, resistant to the lie that we can bomb our way to peace. The current wars in Afghanistan, the Middle East and North Africa, they are not WWII. There are different dynamics at play. The example of Afghanistan, the longest war in American history, outlasting the Civil War, WWI, WWII and the Korean War combined, is a tragic example of violence failing as a solution. Thousands of civilians have died, and thousands of young soldiers from the US and its allies too, while Afghanistan remains one of the lowest ranking countries on the UN's Human Development Index. Jirga is not only an anti-war film, however. At the heart of it are personal themes of guilt and redemption, emotional challenges every human being faces. The story of a man debilitated by guilt who takes it upon himself to 'make good' in the most extraordinary way could just as well be set in the US, Europe of Australia. So it is also about courage, but not the stereotypical warrior male courage, the super-hero myth we are still sucking on, the tough-guy physical courage. Jirga shows a deeper level of courage, a moral courage, the courage of humility. It emphasises a masculinity defined by empathy and compassion.
How have the script and film evolved over the course of their development?
I think many indie filmmakers experience what we went through, at least in terms of script evolution. For us there was considerable wiggle-room and this is because actor Sam Smith and myself embarked on our adventure to Afghanistan with a huge degree of freedom. We originally had $100K USD finance from a Pakistani businessman whose only request was that we shoot in the tribal areas of Pakistan up against the Afghan border. But he hadn't sorted out correct permits from the Pakistani spy agency to work in that region and when we put the screenplay to them they balked. They banned us from shooting in Pakistan, the financier pulled his money out and were tailed and harassed by secret agents. All we had was a small bag of savings, crowd-funding and Screen Australia development funds, and most of that was spent on buying a camera in a Pakistani shopping mall as we could no longer afford a DoP. Although this was all rather stressful, one of the main blessings-in-disguise was that we ended up re-writing the script and simplifying it, which it improved the story enormously.
Simplicity is the purest form of art, I believe. Governments and disaster capitalists and mass media have long tried to hoodwink us with the alleged complexity of wars so we give up trying to understand and the moment we do that we're disengaged, which is partly I think why modern-day colonialism is able to flourish. So Sam and I both realised, at some point, that our circumstances were directing us to make a better film, to simplify it, to find the heart of the story and strip off the layers of unreality. We then flew to Afghanistan and shot the entire film there, another blessing because we benefited from the fruits of reality all around us. In a world of lies, a world of superficiality, we were given the gift of authenticity, of using real villagers, real former Taliban foot-soldiers, and that is what audiences have responded to. The truth. It's what people are craving right now.
What type of feedback have you received so far?
The greatest joy I've experienced since being on location among my Afghan friends has been meeting audience members on their way out of screenings. We opened in Toronto with packed cinemas and it was easy to see that audiences were moved. Jirga is one of those films I think that is so rare people are kind of stunned when the lights come up. It's rare, as in, there are very few films at all coming out of Afghanistan, and I can't think of another feature-length drama made there by foreigners in recent years. Feedback has been overwhelmingly positive: about the humane depiction of Afghans, about the remarkable performance of the Afghan non-actors, including a female, about the superbly beautiful landscape. But mostly about the story and themes the film explores, the importance of them in the context of Western engagement in Afghanistan and other countries.
Has the feedback surprised or challenged your point of view?
Our festival screenings have not been without controversy. Every now and then someone has questioned our portrayal of the Taliban, the fact they are humanised. So this has been discussed and my response is always the same: that our depiction of the Taliban is absolutely authentic, and that I believe all humans can be humanised.
I don't expect everyone to share this view. It's certainly a difficult position to take if, for instance, you've had a loved one killed or maimed at the hands of another. But I've not reached this belief from under a rock. In my 22-years as a frontline paramedic I've met some pretty troubled humans, murderers included. I've run aid projects in Africa and Pakistan, seen horrors untold. And I've taken tea with militants, I've actually met Taliban. And I stand firm in my belief that for humans to move as a species we need to practice empathy, to listen and try and understand the way others see the world. Empathy is the pre-requisite to compassion, and compassion is love, and only in love can we grow. My job as a human blessed with a healthy upbringing, a healthy body and mind, is to do my bit to help those less fortunate, be it rendering medical aid, running a refugee camp or promoting empathy by way of a film.
What are you looking to achieve by having your film more visible on www.wearemovingstories.com?
I'm hoping to inspire other filmmakers who have stories that need to be in the world, to know that despite the seemingly insurmountable obstacles, your film is possible. I never went to film school and I learned from reading books and playing with a camera. Actor Sam Smith and I flew to Afghanistan, two mates going on a trip to a place that's arguably still a war zone. We had very little money at all. We had a consumer camera (Sony A76 Mark II) and no accessories. We recorded sound using only the camera's in built mic. We used natural lighting, not a reflector in sight. As the director I had to shoot it myself, all handheld. We used non-actors in real locations with no schedule and on-the-fly, when we could, where we could. We made shit up on the spot. We made something from nothing. I'd like to think that if we could do this, you can do whatever you think you can't do. All you need is a story. A vital, compelling, simple, moving story.
Who do you need to come on board (producers, sales agents, buyers, distributors, film festival directors, journalists) to amplify this film’s message?
We have a wonderful sales agent Visit Films and a brilliant US distributor, Lightyear Entertainment who are releasing Jirga theatrically in June. We are looking for peace groups and/or peace philanthropists willing to get behind Jirga, who can see the film's potential as a vehicle for peace. It's a costly undertaking to release a film, to promote it, and this is no ordinary film. I have always seen Jirga as a humanitarian project, a life-saving project. Because the absence of war is also the absence of associated morbidity and mortality. So Jirga has the potential to do enormously positive work. Actor Sam Smith and I have a helluva story to tell about the making of Jirga. It was a nail-biting experience, especially in Jalalabad not far from ISIS positions, and there was plenty of high-jinx too with our fun-loving Afghan cast, which I hope will generate some media interest in the lead up to the release. But I don't want our making-of adventure, no matter how crazy it was, to distract from the point of Jirga.
What type of impact and/or reception would you like this film to have?
My intention was always to provoke a discussion on the impact of war, to underline my opinion that the human and monetary costs of conflict are rarely worth the perceived gains. That is, if we value human life more than wealth and control. For nearly two decades authoritarian violence has been carried out and justified in the name of anti-terrorism when in fact the real reasons have been more to do with power and predatory capitalism. Violence breeds more violence and caught in the middle are always the innocent people. Audiences who have seen Jirga have no doubt discussed these matters, although one gets the distinct feeling our audience has always been in our camp and that's why they bought a ticket in the first place. So what can cinema do as a tool of resistance?
It's my hope that among audiences are those who are confused or misinformed or have accidentally chosen the film thinking our intention is to provoke sympathy only for the Western soldier. It's my hope that among the audience there will be fence-sitters with one leg in war and one in peace, that by the end of the film they're no longer in such a compromising position. In saying that, it does make me despondent when I see nothing change, makes me wonder if it's worth the effort. Pretty sure our film has had absolutely nothing to do with it, but the fact President Trump is pulling troops out of Afghanistan now (for purely selfish reasons I'm sure) somehow makes me less despondent because I've always argued for a complete military withdrawal.
What’s a key question that will help spark a debate or begin a conversation about this film?
But what happens if we leave Afghanistan? That's always a good one. And that is a question I entered Afghanistan with. That's is the privilege of travelling to a country at war, you get to see things for yourself, hear the opinions of people on the street, get their point of view. I'm not one of those academic Afghanistan experts who've never been there or a diplomat who goes there but hides in a compound. My opinions pretty much mirror the opinions of the majority of Afghans I met and worked with while making Jirga.
Would you like to add anything else?
Before 9/11 there was a country thoroughly neglected for years, a country we allowed to wallow in hunger and illiteracy from which the disease of militancy grew. But bombs are not food, and missiles are not books. Violence cannot cure for violence. The great Iranian filmmaker Mohsen Makhmalbaf who made Kandahar once described his film as a tiny flame fanned by the suffering of millions in Afghanistan. His film came at a time in 2001 when the world was trying to make sense of the attacks in New York. My hope is that Jirga has come at a time when people are trying to make sense of why we're still in Afghanistan, still persisting in trying to make peace with war.
What other projects are the key creatives developing or working on now?
Our lead Afghan actor Amirshah Talash, one of the countries great Pashtun filmmakers, has just released his latest film Sajda about a failed Talib who falls in love. It's funny, but while we were shooting Jirga Amirshah was secretly shooting scenes from Sajda on his mobile phone at the same time. It was a great opportunity for him because we were taking him to stunning locations he might not ordinarily have gone to. So he'd have his costume for Sajda in his bag and he'd disappear for a while and I'd find him shooting a scene selfie-style. Lead actor Sam Smith has been getting a great deal of praise for his performance as Mike Wheeler, the veteran who returns to Afghanistan. He's also in the hotly anticipated film The Nightingale and I see a brilliant future for him. He is just superb to work with and has extremely good instincts and a subtlety of performance that I really valued. We had a giggle the other day when we read a review that described him as a 'young Clint Eastwood'. But he definitely has that vibe. I'd like to do a remake of a Sergio Leone spaghetti Western with Sam one day. Perhaps set in Afghanistan...
Interview: January 2019
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Jirga
A former Australian soldier returns to Afghanistan to find the family of a civilian he accidentally killed and apologise to them, placing himself willingly at the mercy of the village justice system – the Jirga.
Length: 78 mins
Director: Benjamin Gilmour
Producer: John Maynard
Writer: Benjamin Gilmour
Composer: AJ True
About the writer, director:
BENJAMIN GILMOUR is an Australian director behind the critically acclaimed film 'Son of a Lion' (2008) selected for the Berlinale. He also directed the feature doc 'Paramedico' (2013) and is the author of several non-fiction books on his work in emergency care and filmmaking in Pakistan and Afghanistan. He is represented by Verve, LA.
Key cast: Sam Smith, Amirshah Talash, Sher Alam Miskeen Ustad, Arzo Weda
Facebook: @jirgamovie
Twitter: @benjamingilmour
Instagram: @peacelion
Funders: Screen Australia, Indiegogo
Made in association with: Felix Media, Australia
Where can I watch it next and in the coming month? Opens in US cinemas in June, follow on social media for release info.