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Our Own Private Bin Laden (2005)

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Directed by Samira Goetschel.
After she saw the World Trade Center collapse, Samira Goetschel needed to understand. As a girl, she had escaped to New York when Islamic extremists murdered her father in her native country Iran. "I felt that what I had fled had now caught up with me." Who was this enemy and what was its history? How had Osama bin Laden suddenly become a global icon and what did his image actually represent?" Ms. Goetschel’s background, her post-graduate studies in European intellectual history, and her own intense persistence make her particularly well-suited to attack these questions. Her first feature-length documentary, Our Own Private Bin Laden, comes up with some surprising and intriguing answers. One would certainly have to agree that they are certainly timely and relevant. Appropriately enough, she never uses so much as a single image of her notorious subject. Her determination and boldness is reminiscent of Michael Moore, though she undoubtedly pulls it off with more restraint. Goetschel comes up with one high-caliber interview after another. Included in her film are talks with several eminent investigative journalists; ex-president of Pakistan, Benazir Bhutto; President Carter’s National Security Advisor, Zbigniew Brzezinski; ex-Director of the CIA, Stansfield Turner; political activist Noam Chomsky. And more. All packed into a tight, persuasive argument. Goetschel highlights how the media, politics, global economics and history have all contributed to make bin Laden and modern terrorism what it is today. Have “terror” and the “war on terror” become essentially co-dependent on one another over the years? Shouldn’t we ask if we have helped – and are continuing to help – bin Laden become a global icon? "I don't have 'my own private bin Laden,'" says Samira Goetschel. "My film's point is that we have collectively produced one, and that is the problem".