Operation Filmmaker

Muthana is a 25-year-old film student from Baghdad. He gets on an MTV show in which he presents his film school, destroyed in a bomb attack. The attack also ruined his dreams of becoming a film director. The programme is seen by actor Liev Schreiber, who is directing a film of his own and wants to give the young man a chance. Muthana is offered an internship at the film shoot in Czechoslovakia. Everyone is happy.

Things go well until Muthana realises his job is serving coffee and making photocopies. The cheerful boy becomes negative and lazy. Liev is disappointed, the producer is disappointed. Nobody is happy anymore.

Again and again Muthana wins everyone’s sympathies and many offer to help him. And it is the ones who offer their help to him that are hurt when Muthana forgets the notion of gratitude. Is that the way it is? The more you dare to ask for, the more you get, and impudence gets rewarded?

Hannele Majaniemi | Translation by Jaana Wiik

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