The Common Language Project and the CD-based film studio The Last Quest are working to finish a documentary about an Iraqi immigrant living in a Seattle suburb who got caught up in the war on terror and was deported.
To finish the film, they have Kickstarter campaign running that they hope will raise the $8,400 they need for post-production and animation.
The Last Quest were profiled in CDNews in September. They are housed in the 2522 E Cherry building, which joined the Second Saturday Art Walk on Cherry Street last year. They screened some short films and even held scratch-film animation workshops.
From the filmmakers:
Sam “Barzan” Malkandi, an Iraqi immigrant to the US and beloved family man, was working toward his piece of the American Dream in a Seattle suburb. But a footnote in the 9/11 Commission Report, connecting him to a high-level Al-Qaeda operative through his childhood nickname, changed everything. Five years of detention and multiple appeals later, Malkandi was deported back to Iraq–leaving behind a wife and two children.
Seattle-based journalists and filmmakers have teamed up to tell Malkandi’s story in a feature film titled Barzan. The team has turned to Kickstarter.com to help raise the post-production funds needed to complete their film.
Last year Barzan Director Alex Stonehill and Producer Sarah Stuteville traveled to Iraq and conducted a series of interviews with Malkandi. About his time in Iraq Stonehill says, “We met [Malkandi’s] family and roamed the city of his childhood. But there were so many questions that went unanswered, with each day that passed the story got deeper.”
Upon returning to Seattle, Stuteville and Stonehill, co-founders of the multimedia journalism nonprofit the Common Language Project, joined forces with the Last Quest, a local production company, to turn their reporting into a feature length documentary.
Barzan explores the controversial issues of immigration, xenophobia and the price of security in the 21st century. This film is an epic geopolitical journey from the front lines of the Iran-Iraq War to the refugee camps of Pakistan and finally into the opaque government agencies charged with keeping us safe, even at the cost of freedom.