Jihad Rehab

Smaker's documentary centers on four men, who after spending 15 years as detainees in Guantánamo military prison were sent to "the world's first terrorist rehabilitation center" in Saudi Arabia. Smaker had heard about the center while working in Yemen and was determined to interview the men inside. The film "took over five years" to make: a year to get access from the Saudis, three years of filming of the subjects—a year and a half each in the rehab and then after they get out and try to find jobs, marry and settle down—and finally two years of editing.:6:24 During the first year of applying for access, the Saudis "kept saying no,” but they eventually would allow her to go in with the stipulation that she "couldn’t film any inmates unless they agreed to be filmed," a requirement she thinks was intended to get her to give up on the film. “They wanted to be able to say, 'We tried. Sorry!'”.1:01:00 • economic necessity, specifically the need for employment; • "peer pressure", usually in the form of traditional family obedience to father or older brother;:7:00 == Reception ==

Critical response The review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes reported a 69% approval rating with an average rating of 6.60/10, based on 12 critic reviews. The film was accepted to the Sundance Film Festival and to South by Southwest film festival, and won the Audience Award at the 38th Warsaw Film Festival. Tomris Laffly of Variety described the film as feeling like "a miracle and an interrogative act of defiance." Jordan Hoffman of The Guardian rated the film 4 out of 5 stars and stated "This is a movie for intelligent people looking to have their preconceived notions challenged." Lorraine Ali at Los Angeles Times wrote that the documentary was "a humanizing journey through a complex emotional process of self-reckoning and accountability, and a look at the devastating fallout of flawed U.S. and Saudi policy." Ronda Racha Penrice at TheWrap wrote that "It's hard to overstate the power of Smaker's debut documentary." Jordan Mintzer at The Hollywood Reporter wrote "Megan Smaker gives viewers the rare chance to get up close and personal with the men of no nation, territory or uniform that President Bush kept locked up for so long." Other reviews were much more negative. Pat Mullen at POV Magazine thought Jihad Rehab "mostly reinforces the stereotypes that exploded post-9/11". Abby Sun at Filmmaker writes that Smaker is guilty of "unapologetically anti-Muslim jingoism cloaked in a no-less objectionable paternalistic humanitarianism". Davide Abbatescianni, of The New Arab, acknowledged that "Smaker sheds light, at least in part, on some of the rehabilitation center's practices and controversies," but accused her of failing to "treat her subjects ... with adequate depth and fairness." Campaign against it and response by festival organizers Sundance Film Festival announced its lineup of films for its 2022 festival on December 9, 2021, including a world premiere of Jihad Rehab on January 22. Smaker was enormously pleased as, "there is no better festival to premier at than Sundance. It can literally make your whole entire career and it can launch your film." Sundance normally receives approximately 15,000 submissions and accepts 16 for its festival. Abigail Disney, who served as an executive producer of the film, formally apologized and offered a call to action for more gatekeepers to be mindful of ethical representation in authorship and programming. Muslim and MENA filmmakers have called for After Sundance, most other festivals canceled their invitations of the film. South by Southwest cancelled their screening, ==Controversy==

Charges against The criticisms of the film by independent Muslim filmmakers, activists and critics are varied and have evolved since they first were made. Taking the opposite tack, Gail Helt and Clive Stafford Smith accused Smaker of “hyping" and making a "straw-person thing" over this issue (i.e. the claim that Smaker was "Islamophobic" and it was ethical for a white woman like her to make a film about Muslims imprisoned for terrorism), because it was the least persuasive of the complaints against her. In reply, Smaker says that “all the original articles about the film talk about Islamophobia and being harmful to the [Muslim] community. That was the original attack, and it only moved to the other things when it came out that my executive producer, co-producer, and assistant editor were all Muslim", and that they were "being framed as criminals (despite never standing trial in the U.S. or Saudi [Arabia])". However the film itself notes that "neither the United States nor Saudi Arabia" has ever put the men on trial let alone convicted them, and provides evidence that the "circumstances of their imprisonment in Guantánamo were disgraceful, even downright torturous", according to Graeme Wood. Lorraine Ali, a television critic for the Los Angeles Times who is Muslim, disagreed with this criticism, calling the film "a humanizing journey," that "took pains to understand the culture these men came from and molded them." However, in an October 2022 podcast, Smaker stated, "I've been in contact with the guys throughout that entire time, I literally just got a message from one of them ... yesterday", making no mention of feeling in danger. She notes that it had been nine months since the public (and Saudi government) had had a chance to hear what the ex-prisoners had to say with film's premier. "I don't know if you know about the Saudi government, [but] if the Saudi government was going to do something" to punish the subjects/men who are allegedly in danger for speaking out, "they wouldn't have waited nine months".2:38:45 Graeme Wood calls the claim that "the existence of this film" places the subjects of it in peril, "the most serious criticism of Smaker’s film", but also "the most mysterious", because all graduates of Saudi Arabia's terror-rehab program, are forbidden by Saudi Arabia (where they live) "from contact with former or current jihadists, including one another, and are not supposed to talk with foreigners or the media", (they were given special permission to talk to Smaker). The mystery comes from the fact that for an ex-prisoner to make statements to The Guardian without permission would be to risk the punishment of the "violent dictatorship" they live in, but on the other hand, if they had been given permission, it would mean (as Wood put it), the Saudi government was un-gagging a subject of the film, just so the subject could reveal to the public "that the Saudi government might harm him if the film comes out.":2:34:01 According to Wood, the prisoners' statements about fear come via the Guantanamo prisoners' NGO CAGE. Wood asked CAGE and Stafford Smith (the lawyer for Guantanamo prisoners and critic of Smaker's film) "for proof that any of the men has claimed to be at risk. They did not reply." In addition, the Saudi government has a number of contractual obligations with the US government in exchange for taking in the ex-prisoners, one of which is not to torture or kill them.2:39:17 Fallout Comments about the significance of the film's cancelation, disagree. Film critic Davide Abbatescianni writes that "hopefully, the turbulent distribution of this documentary [i.e. its cancelation] can teach everyone in the industry something valuable about curatorial strategies, the filming of sensitive subjects and unconscious bias". Smaker, on the other hand, worries that if a film festival "as powerful as Sundance" could capitulate and apologize to a group that had not even seen the film they were attacking (when they started attacking it), "then eventually people are only going to program safe films which don't talk about the issues" that are hard to talk about and for which the independent film "space" is so well suited. "If this space now has become infected with this … propensity to play it safe and avoid conflict, then there is no other space for it, there is no … plan C. This was the space where films got made and got platformed, and without that I'm very fearful of where my industry is headed."3:04:55 ==Notes==