Spotlight on challenges and prospects of directing “This is still genocide” documentary

Interview by Kathrine Hawes with Mohamad Chreyteh | Georgetown University — Washington, D.C.
November 30, 2022

Transcription

Interviewer: Katherine Hawes [KH]

Respondent: Mohamad Chreyteh [MC]

Please note: This transcript has been lightly edited to remove filler words or sounds.

[KH]: Thank you for meeting with me today. Could you tell me a little bit about your background and how you got into journalism and directing? 

[MC]: Yes, so initially I studied cinema and then journalism, and I started working in journalism actually two years before I graduated in 2008 in a local TV station. Then I started working in TV and newsroom, which I liked. That’s why I did not shift. I graduated in cinema, but I also studied journalism because I was in a newsroom and I was working closely with the journalists and reporters on the ground, and I have interest in news and politics and, and so on. I then moved to work with the AFP, Agence France-Presse. That was the first international media outlet. 

Interestingly, in Lebanon, there are very good universities, but they teach either traditional journalism, like newspaper journalism, written journalism, and there are other schools for cinema and video making. So by studying both majors together, I gained experience in video making and visual storytelling and the skills of a journalist. And that's how I first made it to AFP, and then I moved to an international news gathering agency that was called Transterra Media. It was a startup back then, but then gained quite a few million dollars to create a very good operation in Beirut and Dubai, and then moved to London and it's now based in Texas, in the United States.

At Transterra Media I worked at the biggest news outlets there from the US to Europe to Arabic broadcasters. I made very good contacts, which actually led to me moving to the BBC. I started working as a news producer for BBC English in Beirut. Then I moved to be a senior journalist with BBC Arabic, then I moved again to work with documentaries and investigations, and now I'm Beirut Bureau Chief for Deutsche Welle. Right before I joined Deutsche Welle I did my last project as a freelancer; I did the “This is still genocide” documentary. 

[00:04:45]

[KH]: I noticed that you had done the Trauma Training for Journalists. What are some of the main lessons that you learned from that training and how do you apply that training to your work? 

[MC]: Well, this is a very important question for someone who survived the Beirut port explosion. 

These courses are extremely important for journalists. They are essential; they are requirements, I think, for journalists who want to go there on the ground. You see lots of casualties among journalists. Journalists who get hurt from work accidents, it could be anything: weather conditions, riots while covering a protest, wars. So to be trained in first aid to be able to treat yourself or your colleagues, but also to be mentally prepared for any unexpected events that may happen when you are working. So I think these courses are extremely important. You start thinking differently about your job while you are on the ground. That's the importance. It's much more than just treating a wound or a fracture or something. It's the way you think and you plan your journey before you even go on the ground. Big outlets like the BBC or DW, they go to war zones, they are on the front lines, they cover extremely important stories from the ground and they get back safely because they're trained; they have the right equipment and they have the right training and planning for their security on their journeys. 

[00:07:08]

[KH]: In regard to “This is still genocide,” were you involved in conducting any of the interviews that were used for the narration? 

[MC]: That’s an interesting question. By the way, that's the case with the majority of the stories that you report on. You prepare your rundown, you have everything prepared, but on the ground it's something else. Something could emerge, a character could cancel an interview, a character could start telling you a different story than what you had planned. You discover new factors that you didn't really include in your storyline or in your storyboard, et cetera. And that's what happened. 

We had a few characters in mind and Lynn actually facilitated my communication with Yazda. She did a great job in trying to establish communication between me and Yazda and to transcode the technical and journalistic terms that I was using to make Yazda understand what we were really looking for. 

Yazda was actually a huge support on the ground. Things didn't work the way we had planned on our storyboard. They had already spoken with a few characters and had booked them to be interviewed, and then at the last moment, a few logistics went wrong, and then they didn’t feel ready for the interview and felt that they were maybe a bit overwhelmed. So, we ended up interviewing other characters for the story. Things like this happen all the time. 

[00:10:14]

[KH]: Absolutely. How did you initially hear about the project? Did Lynn reach out to you? 

[MC]: Well, I first met Lynn on a completely different project. I was doing a story on Armenians with different perspectives, like Armenians who live in Lebanon, in Turkey, and in Armenia. I wanted to represent the Armenians in the diaspora, and that's how I met Lynn. She saw the story, and she thought that we could try and do a similar story on the Yazidi cause in the upcoming commemoration of the Yazidi genocide. When I produced the story of Armenians in Istanbul, obviously there was the genocide element, so she thought that there was a great treatment for the story and that we should try to do something that could be much more efficient and effective than just a commemoration online with the presence of a few diplomats and politicians and people from the community. Maybe we could do something that would stay online where everyone has access to it and where it would last much longer than a conference that would end on the second day. So she initiated the idea. Actually, I had talked to Lynn about a project that I had in mind that started with the Armenian community, but then we moved to producing stories on other minority groups, including the Yazidis. We thought that, well, next, let's go straight to the Yazidis because it was close to the genocide memorial. 

[00:12:39]

[KH]: Interesting. Could you tell me a little about the process of directing “This is still genocide” and some of the challenges that arose during this journey? 

[MC]: Yes. Well, thanks to Lynn and her way of communication and her way of positively manipulating all the factors at play for the good of the project, we had big challenges, but they seemed minimal working with Lynn and Yazda. Obviously, changing characters on the day of the shooting and at late stages of production was a huge challenge. It creates a kind of frustration. Another challenge was logistics, flying to Beirut in the time of Covid. You may think that it is easy, that you just go to the airport, get a visa, and go out there and start filming, but that is not the case. 

It's very complicated that you need to go to Baghdad to get the visa. Otherwise you can’t go back to Iraq if you go straight to Kurdistan, the region where a lot of Yazidi camps were. So you have to be very well prepared and talk to people on the ground and put together information because there are a lot of narratives that you're being told at this stage. 

But the biggest challenge was security. I went to Mount Sinjar, where a lot of Yazidis are still taking refuge. In Sinjar, there's no presence of the police or army. There are militias who run the area. They are not united; there are always ongoing clashes between them, so it's really hard to manage the security situation and the security of the team. You talk to a militia, you talk to another militia, just to make sure that you are safe, that you can still film there. 

[00:17:22]

[KH]: How did you identify speakers for the documentary? 

[MC]: Well, first of all, Lynn introduced me to Yazda, and I definitely needed someone from Yazda because they did the biggest work with Yazidi survivors. We initially identified lead characters through Yazda. We received suggestions from different people at Yazda and then we shortlisted the characters to two or three maximum. 

Everyone among the community has a story. They have all suffered and they all have similar stories, but we had to be specific about which characters could be best for this documentary, someone the audience could relate with and feel emotional about. 

We spoke with a survivor who is back in his hometown in Sinjar, but his family is out there in one of the camps in Duhok, or somewhere that is really far. 

It feels like a family who used to live together for years and years as one community in their hometown, is now refugees in their own country. We tried to get a couple as well, someone who came back to defend his hometown after the genocide. He had a gun and he doesn't feel safe leaving Sinjar; he wants to fight because of what happened to him, because of what he witnessed happen to the Yazidi community. And his wife, his mother, his sister are somewhere in the camps. They can't get back to their hometown because their home is destroyed. 

They have nowhere to go back to; Sinjar is still not safe. So that's the kind of story that shows that these people are still feeling the genocide, and that's why Lynn came up with the title “This is still genocide.” 

[00:20:42]

[KH]: This is going back a bit, but could you talk about some of the other ways that Yazda supported the production of this documentary? 

[MC]: Well, they did very good work in talking to the local militias and people at the army checkpoints. They had already prepared for this. They sent someone to stay with me for a whole day in Sinjar, which is not a very safe area. Someone from Yazda accompanied me, and she facilitated the research for speakers from the ground, and she did some translation. Also, the country director was actually one of the people I interviewed. 

They also offered their premises as a base for me to film the meeting for the survivors and as a place for the team to stay and start planning for the next interview. 

[KH]: Could you tell me a little more about this process of talking to local militias to ensure that the film crew would be safe during this process? What sort of discussions or negotiations went into that process? 

[00:22:36]

[MC]: Well, there's a little bit of politics in there, and we wanted to stay distant from politics because, you know, every militia is financed and supported by one party or another, one country or another. So, Yazda actually briefed me on the situation, on which militia belonged to who, who is the most safe to talk to, how do we approach them, what their backgrounds are, what the red lines that we don't want to talk about are, et cetera, et cetera. 

During the production, during the filming, during our trip on the ground, we had to communicate with militia leaders and members on the ground, just because whenever they see a camera or a crew they just go crazy. So we just introduce ourselves. We tell them that we're not filming militia bases, we're not going to show faces, et cetera. We're not interested in militants. We're doing a story on the Yazidi community, on the genocide. So that's always the approach, being friendly, making sure you don't just hold your camera and start filming wherever you go. 

There are really sensitive situations that could put you in danger. I really trusted Yazda because I needed a fighter. I needed someone from the community who is a survivor and who holds a gun now to defend his land and his family. 

So I just trusted Yazda on choosing the right guy. As a journalist, you always have to depend on local fixers/producers/NGOs because they know the ground and they know who can be approached and who cannot. 

[00:25:22]

[KH]: So, who is the intended audience for this documentary? Who are you most hoping will see it? 

[MC]: Well, honestly, this is a very niche documentary, but it's a story of human rights and defiance. So the intended audience is the global community first, but then the Yazidi community; they deserve to be given voices. And not only in the news, they needed to be featured in a long format documentary. 

We all know that the story of survivors and the Yazidis and what happened was covered by the media and it grabbed a lot of attention from the international media, but it stopped there, right? 

Because it was news. The moment it's no longer news, no one is there for them. So we thought that we should give them a voice; they needed to feel that there is a platform where they can talk and raise their concerns, and the international community, diplomats, politicians, needed to understand that it wasn't just a genocide in history where everything afterwards returned to the right track just because ISIS is almost gone from the area. If you don't understand that 300,000 people are still refugees outside their hometowns—where they lived for all their lives—then there's a problem. If you think that fighting ISIS or regaining control over a piece of land is enough for the community, that is not true. 

[00:27:44]

[KH]: Could you talk a bit about why it is necessary to center the voices of Yazidi survivors in discussions about moving forward from this genocide? 

[MC]: Well, sometimes the industry is unfair for survivors and victims. I mean, this is the news business, right? The industry tends to discover the news whenever there is news and whenever there is tragedy, and then let go. 

It's not something that happened in history and ended. It is an ongoing struggle. So that's why I think it’s so important to shed light through features, through documentaries, through human stories—giving them voices again, through not only talking about trauma and events from the past, but saying that we still haven't overcome the situation. It's still there. We thought that by reviving the Yazidi cause, by visiting the area, we could make the international community, the international audience understand that what happened isn't history. It isn’t in the past. It is still ongoing. It isn’t just the present. The way things are going, it's also the future, and this is dangerous. People need to talk about it and, and people need to see it. 

[00:30:22]

[KH]: Absolutely. I think that as an American, I think that when, if we ever discuss this genocide—which is rare, I think there's very little visibility of the Yazidi genocide here, at least from what I've seen—I think that even when we do talk about it, we view it as something that happened in 2014 and is now over. I think there's very little recognition of all of the ways in which it continues to affect the Yazidi community. So, I think that this documentary is such an important project. Could you talk a bit about how this documentary might support the fight to bring justice and security to the Yazidi community? 

[MC]: Well, in just making people aware that this is an ongoing cause, it is an ongoing struggle. It's not something, just like you said, it's not something that happened in 2014. It is still ongoing. People are still missing. The community hasn't yet recovered. The majority of the community did not get to go back home. So, this is only doable through features and stories. It doesn't have to be documentaries. I mean, visuals are obviously a very strong element to making people aware of the situation. But overall it is just really necessary that this type of work keeps going, keeps shedding light. 

This documentary was originally seen as a kind of protest against the current situation, against the lack of action towards the Yazidi community and the lower levels of funding that are now being given to the community, just because everyone thinks that, well, ending ISIS is the solution. Gaining ground again is the solution. But there is another part, not only giving Yazidis 

enough money to restore their lives, but also to make the international audience and community recognize their genocide, and to bring justice. That is the most important part of reconciliation, for these people to restore their lives, to feel safe again, if they ever go back to their hometowns. 

It's not only about money and reparations. Yes, that's huge. Rebuilding their community, rebuilding their homes, rebuilding their cities, rebuilding their markets is a huge part. But the bigger part is that they need to feel safe to go back there after what happened. They still don't feel safe because justice has not been in action. 

A lot of the fighters are actually still being tried, not for provoking genocide, but just for being militants or belonging to a terrorist group. Clear and direct recognition of the genocide will restore their lives and bring safety for them to return one day to this land and community. 

[00:35:07]

[KH]: What are some of the main messages that you hope audiences will take away from this documentary? 

[MC]: Well, obviously a lot of work needs to be done, and we wanted the audience to understand the root of the problem, not just to be aware of a problem that happened in the past, rather that it is still ongoing with very tough repercussions. They need to be aware that the problem started with not giving enough recognition and voice to minorities. 

The inaction is still ongoing. Laws need to be developed. Internal communication in a country that witnesses such a tragedy needs to be much, much better. There is basically very little or no communication between the region of Kurdistan, where a lot of Yazidi refugees are, and Iraq, where the courts have different sets of laws. So, different fighters could be tried with different charges. So it is just crazy. They need to understand the root problem. 

They need to understand that making gains or regaining some land isn't enough. That's not the work that needs to be done. The community is still struggling and much more work needs to be done on awareness and justice. 

[00:37:40]

[KH]: Could you summarize some of the main goals of bringing justice to the Yazidi community? 

[MC]: I think that the major goals for bringing justice to the community is to help them restore their lives safely in the land where they were born and raised, but also to stop any other genocide in the future for any community. Obviously, Yazidis were victims. Along with Yazidis, people from other ethnicities and minorities were victims as well. But it’s not a story only about Yazidis. It’s a story about any minority, about any human. It's preventing such violence, preventing such acts, making people understand how to recognize, understand, and cherish differences because the majority sometimes tends to not understand the difference of other people, including minorities. They tend to think that, well, they're just a small number of people living among us and they need to follow our rules. That leads to genocide.

The Zovighian Partnership is a family-owned social investment platform, established by father and daughter in 2013. Deeply invested in R&D, we are committed to delivering ethical, inclusive, and innovative design, research, and prototypes.

The Zovighian Partnership Public Office is committed to delivering significant resources to bringing grounded methodology, sound governance, and rigorous strategic thinking to communities and cities in crisis. We hold ourselves accountable to giving voice to the diversity of views that are central to long-term and sustainable peace and socio-economic enablement.