ULTIMATE DOCS COMPETITION

GHOSTS OF ABU GHRAIB

USA/Turkey, 2007, 78 min., English

Director: Rory Kennedy
Producer: Liz Garbus
Script: Jack Youngelson
Cinematography: Tom Hurwitz
Editing: Sari Gilman
Music: Miriam Cutler
Sound: Dog Bark Sound, Sound Lounge
Production company: Moxie Firecracker Films
Print Source:
Matthew Justus
Moxie Firecracker Films
39 Lincoln Place
Brooklyn, NY 11217
USA
Tel.: 718 230 5111
Fax: 718 230 5999
e-mail: mjustus@moxiefirecracker.com
www.moxiefirecracker.com


Ghosts of Abu Ghraib

This provocative documentary attempts to examine the real story behind the 2003 prisoner abuse scandal involving detainees in Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison and the US soldiers that acted as guards there. But instead of banking on the media frenzy surrounding the horrific pictures that remained a prominent feature of news items for months, filmmaker Rory Kennedy boldly tackles big picture issues by taking on human nature, human rights and government bureaucracy. Though the acts committed by the soldiers stationed in Abu Ghraib were shocking, Kennedy's film suggests that they were the product of a system fighting terror in a post-9/11 world and a chain of command unwilling to take responsibility for rash courses of action, rather than the acts of "nine bad apples on the night shift." Comprised of interviews with the soldiers involved in - and ultimately prosecuted for – the now familiar acts of torture, as well as with prisoners who either witnessed or lived through the events, Ghosts of Abu Ghraib provides an affecting and poignant look at a scandal that rocked - and divided - the nation.

Rory Kennedy
The youngest daughter of Robert F. Kenney and Ethel Skakel Kennedy, Rory was born in Washington, D.C. in 1968. Raised in Virginia she attended Browne University. A founding member of the production companies May Day Media and Moxie Firecracker Films, Kennedy has produced and/or directed award-winning documentaries for HBO, Lifetime Television, A&E, Court TV, The Oxygen Network and The Learning Channel, covering a variety of topics including the global AIDS crisis, human rights, domestic abuse, poverty, and drug addiction. Her executive produced Street Fight was nominated for an Academy Award for the Best Documentary Feature in 2006.

Filmography (as a director):

Ghosts of Abu Ghraib (2007);
Ten Days That Unexpectedly Changed America: The Homestead Strike (2006), TV;
Indian Point: Imagining the Unimaginable (2004), TV;
Pandemic: Facing AIDS (2003), TV miniseries;
A Boy's Life (2003), TV;
The Changing Face of Beauty (2000), TV;
Epidemic Africa (1999) ;
American Hollow (1999);
America Undercover (1993), TV series (episodes).

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