By Ray Pride Pride@moviecitynews.com
Broomfield sweeps clean: Haditha is next dramatic reconstruction
“The massacre of 24 Iraqi civilians in Haditha by U.S. Marines is the subject of Nick Broomfield‘s next movie, the Reporter’s Charles Masters reports from San Sebastian. Broomfield said “he will use dramatic reconstruction rather than documentary techniques to tell the story of the slayings. In November, Marines allegedly shot dead 24 Iraqi men, women and children in Haditha, in western Iraq, in reprisal for the killing of a lance corporal by a roadside bomb. Witnesses said the Marines went from house to house killing members of three families, including a 1-year-old child. Military investigations into the incident are ongoing. Broomfield said shooting on the film will begin in November in Jordan. “We met with some of the survivors of the massacre who had a lot of material that they filmed, which gave us a very detailed idea of what happened… We talked to members of the insurgency because I felt the insurgency is almost like a concrete wall. It’s like, who are these insurgents?” … It will be Broomfield’s second incursion into dramatic reconstruction of real-life events after Ghosts, which had its world premiere [at] San Sebastian… That movie uses nonprofessional Chinese actors to recount the tale of illegal immigrants and the slave-labor conditions that led to the death of 23 shellfish gatherers in 2004 on a beach in the north of England.” Narrative film, Broomfield says, “can take an audience into a deep emotional place that they will never get from a newspaper article or a more analytical documentary.”