The Unreturned – a film by Nathan Fisher

2011-11-14T21:27:00.000-06:00

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"Artful and unflinching... a feat of remarkable cinematic agility"
- Minneapolis City Pages

"An important, untold story"
- Minneapolis Star Tribune

"Damn good"
- PopMatters

"A critically important film"
- Big Bend Sentinel

"★★★★★"
- Mpls-St. Paul Int'l Film Festival Audience Rating

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2010-05-11T13:17:00.005-05:00

In The Unreturned, director Nathan Fisher takes us to Syria and Jordan, two countries that have absorbed the brunt of Iraqi refugees generated by the U.S. occupation of their home country. From these neighboring countries, we hear directly from Iraqis themselves about what life was like in Iraq, both before and after the U.S.-led invasion, why they fled, why the choose not to return, and what life is like as a refugee.

The numbers that reveal the scope of this crisis are staggering. Currently, according to recent UN figures, more than 4.8 million Iraqis remain displaced from their homes, roughly half of those persons internally displaced within Iraq. This number has changed little over the last three years.

Having covered the Iraq War since 2003, much of my time in 2006 and 2007 was spent in Syria and Jordan doing exactly what Fisher has done in “The Unreturned”: work to show people in the U.S. the Iraqi face of the occupation that is largely ignored in U.S. mainstream media.

The Unreturned, which screens Friday at 2pm at the Crowley Theater, is a critically important film for every citizen of the U.S. We all must see it to understand fully the effects abroad of the policies of the U.S. government, as well as to understand better the reality of the situation in Iraq today, more than seven years into what is sure to be an “enduring” occupation.

Iraqis now comprise a little over 8% of the population of Syria, a small, impoverished country, and UNHCR estimates that barely 9 percent of the displaced have returned to Iraq. According to UN authorities that appear in “The Unreturned,” the UN budget and programs available to assist the massive numbers of Iraqi refugees are only enough to “scratch the surface” of the problem.

Iraqi refugees are not allowed to work, given their refugee status; thus most struggle with poverty, insecurity, poor housing conditions, threats of violence, and the myriad indignities that one faces as a refugee, despite many of them holding advanced degrees and having run successful businesses back in Iraq.

This film humanizes Iraqis, and lets them tell the viewer of the realities of their lives. Fisher follows five Iraqis to display the ongoing plight of Iraqis who suffer from the occupation of their country, even when they’ve escaped with their lives. “During Saddam regime it was terrible,” Najlaa, a Christian Iraqi, says in the film, “[The] life situation was, nobody can bear it. And after Saddam, things [are] getting worse. Now we are saying ‘During Saddam, things are better than now.’ And this is a disaster, because during Saddam there are no human rights at all. And it [was] better than now. So you can imagine what is going on now.”

Abu Talat, a 58-year-old father of four, was my primary interpreter during eight of my months in Iraq. He finally gave up hope of remaining in his home in Baghdad, took his family, and like more than a million other Iraqis, fled to Syria. One of the luckier refugees, he had enough savings to rent a humble two-room apartment in Damascus.

He had always been, and remains, a proud man. Having served in the Iraqi Army until 1990, he holds military traits such as dignity, honesty, and honor in the highest regard.

Upon my arrival in Syria, he invited me to his home to share dinner with his family. After the meal, while we were drinking strong tea, he asked his daughter to show me the certificate from the UNHCR which proves that they are officially refugees. He handed me the paper and watched me as I read it.

The document lists him as the head of the family. A black-and-white photo of him is at the top of the page, and the names and ages of his family members at the bottom. Just above them is the following text:

“This is to certify that the above named person has been recognized as a refugee by the United Nations by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees pursuant to its extended mandate. As a refugee, (he/she) is a person of concern to the office of the United High Commissioner for Refugees, and should, in particular, be protected from forcible return to a country where (he/she) would face threats to his or her life or freedom. Any assistance accorded to above/named individual would be most appreciated.”

I glanced at him, not knowing what to say, then handed the paper back. He looked it over himself, as if in disbelief, then let his gaze focus on nothing in particular, while his chest heaved as he visibly struggled to master the urge to weep. Finally, he said to no one in particular, “I am now a refugee.”

– Dahr Jamail, Big Bend Sentinel, May 6, 2010

2010-04-14T11:24:00.003-05:00

It's a stone's throw to a decade of war for the United States, a time that has seen the American media paint an unendingly nightmarish portrait of an occupied Iraq—a place of rubble and waterless desert, where humanity is divided into a grotesque trinity of archetypes—the sinister insurgent, the bewildered innocent, and the noble, if inept, American GI.

The American media has offered viewers a feast of coverage to be sure—no IED has gone unfilmed, no raid on an insurgent stronghold unphotographed—but it has been a feast of wax fruit, counterfeit and malnourishing, while desperately important truths go unreported.

The Unreturned, a feature-length documentary directed by Minnesota-born filmmaker Nathan Fisher, pulls off a feat of remarkable cinematic agility. A bald and intimate look into the lives of Iraqi refugees displaced to countries like Syria and Jordan in the wake of the war, The Unreturned is an artful and unflinching penetration of the wartime prejudices that the American public has been made to wear like Kevlar flak jackets, a potent cinematic solvent to the grotesque caricature of the Iraqi that the Western media has sold the world.

"I thought of myself as informed about the war," says Fisher, "but I was floored by this massive refugee crisis I'd never heard of. I'd known the media had done a terrible job covering the war, but I couldn't believe how badly they'd dropped the ball on the largest consequence of it."

Originally from St. Louis Park, Fisher emerged from his undergraduate education at Pomona College with a degree in politics and a keen interest in the important stories that have a curious way of hiding in the periphery. Fisher enrolled himself in the film program at New York City's New School, and as he began to develop a thesis project, curious and dismaying intelligence began to reach him: Since the American invasion of Iraq, a full 20 percent of the nation had fled to find asylum in border countries—a number that, depending on the estimate, now sits at between 2 million and 4 and a half million people.

Who were these millions of displaced? What were their lives? And most important, could they ever return to their native land? The more Fisher looked, the more he found that the largest displacement of humanity in half a century was going unreported, lost in a bramble of domestic politics and fevered propaganda.

"I'd been frustrated with the opposition movement and how it focused on domestic politics," says Fisher. "Maybe it was inevitable from the beginning, but with the obsession with George W. Bush, and with getting a Democrat in office, the discussion became about America and not about Iraq. With domestic politics involved, it becomes like any other entrenched debate. And when that happens, you have to figure out another approach and hit people where they haven't built a defense."

Borrowing gear from the New School, booking a winter flight to Amman, Jordan, in late 2008, and cold-calling every Iraqi refugee he could find, Fisher embarked on a close-quarters portrait of the Iraqi displaced, and the resulting film is a masterstroke of tenderness, intimacy, and perspective that shows the collateral victims of a war gone awry in all their vulnerability, hope, and courage.

From over 40 hours of interview material, Fisher profiles a half-dozen Iraqi refugees living in Amman and Damascus, interviewing them at length as they go about their daily occupations. In their struggles to find work and provide for their families, Fisher's characters speak with stunning candor about the American occupation, the constant threat of reprisal from Iraqi insurgents, and the experience of being forced into exile from their homes, businesses, and native soil. Theirs are stories that have been outlined and suggested but rarely illuminated so carefully, and with an unflinching lens Fisher executes a bold undoing of a culture-war reportage that has accomplished little more than wholesale dehumanization, from which the American viewer can easily keep a safe distance.

"In the beginning, it was just a look at this gigantic refugee crisis, one of the largest in 60 years," says Fisher. "But it got more refined once I came back and was looking at the footage and had it translated. It became a story about the middle class, and how the insurgency has targeted them as a deliberate tactic to keep Iraq from being rebuilt."

Hear "refugee" and one likely imagines the tent camps of Mogadishu, endless hellscapes of the starved, naked, and half dead. But here the unreturned are English teachers and cooks, engineers and translators, Shiites, Sunnis, and Christians. They are Iraq's skilled middle class, the primary targets of the urban insurgency, the very people Iraq so desperately needs if it has a prayer of resurrection, and who now struggle in the refugee-choked cities of Amman and Damascus. This startling revelation is the film's most surprising boon. Unlike the caricatures, Fisher's characters are people of aspiration and despair, whose appetites and identities are fully dimensioned and, at last, achingly familiar.

"For any sort of realistic assessment of what's going on," says Fisher, "you need to know that Iraq was a middle-class country, and that these people had the same hopes and aspirations that Americans do. In order for Iraq to be rebuilt, these people need to return. They're the educated and the skilled. But they can't go back until Iraq is safe. It's the catch-22."

– David Hansen, Minneapolis City Pages, April 14, 2010