Meeting Resistance

I recently viewed this film and got to spend a few hours with the directors afterward discussing the film and the general situation in Iraq. The film makers were in Iraq prior to the invasion in 2003 and saw the first signs of resistance forming after the fall of Baghdad. In an attempt to understand this nascent opposition movement they decided to find out who was responsible. They were given an opportunity to interview these "insurgents" after a chance encounter on the street with a person who claimed to be one. After meeting this individual, they were introduced to others who were also resistance fighters engaging in guerrilla war against the foreign occupiers, the United States.

Over the course of ten months they were given unprecedented access to these individuals and, in interviewing them, found that these individuals are not the monsters the mainstream media portrays them to be. Some of them are religious, some of them are family men, some of them are driven by deep nationalist pride. But all are driven by the same need to resist the foreign occupation of their country (although at least one of them was from Syria). This film really puts a human face on the suffering in Iraq and helps narrate a voice rarely heard through the din of U.S. media reporting.