Control Room

When the war in Iraq is about to break out, journalists crowd around the gates of the Arab news station Al-Jazeera in Qatar to see how the network will prepare itself for the imminent climax. One of them manages to get further than all others – documentary filmmaker Jehane Noujaim. Partly owing to her Arab origins, she succeeds in winning the trust of some Al-Jazeera staff members and gets permission to follow them in their journalistic activities in the first weeks of the war. A few miles down the road is the press centre of the U.S. Army, and there Noujaim also follows American journalists who cover the same war, but for a completely different audience. The result is CONTROL ROOM, a fascinating look at the struggle with reality for both American and Arab journalists: on both sides, people try to present their own version of the truth from very different perspectives. The film keenly reveals the reporters' confusion and inner conflicts on the Arab and American side, giving the audience an opportunity to reconsider its opinions based on images shown earlier. For example, were those Iraqis who pulled down the statue of Saddam Hussein on the square in Baghdad “produced” by the American troops, or did the Iraqi people really embrace their liberators?