Director's Statement:

"For any American with a conscience, the war in Iraq has been an all-consuming preoccupation. As a documentary filmmaker, I felt the need to comment on 'Operation Iraqi Enduring Freedom,' in part to assuage the helpless feeling I had watching it unfold on TV. I was casting about for a topic when a unique story fell into my lap. David Schisgall, a friend from college, had directed a piece for MTV about young people living in Iraq, focusing mainly on American soldiers.

'True Life: I'm Living in Iraq' also featured seven minutes about a young Iraqi film student, Muthana Mohmed, who was desperate to go to Hollywood. After the show aired, the actor and director Liev Schreiber contacted David. Liev wanted to give Muthana an opportunity to come to the West, and he thought Muthana's journey might also make for an interesting documentary. David thought I would be the ideal filmmaker to document this story, so I was hired.

"I went to Prague where Liev's film Everything is Illuminated was shot to investigate what I thought would be a fairly straightforward subject—a young Iraqi's experience as an intern on a Hollywood movie. I boarded that plane as myopically as America invaded Iraq, never imagining how complicated things would get or how personally involved in Muthana's life I would become. My own guilt about the war made it impossible to remain an objective witness to his story over the two years that I filmed Muthana's effort to realize his dream to be a filmmaker. For better or worse, I found myself filming a power struggle—between me, an American woman holding the reigns as director of the film, and my subject, an Iraqi man—in what felt at times like a microcosm of the endless conflict in Iraq."

— Nina Davenport