Shooting Under Fire Germany / Israel / Palestinian Territory Occupied
2005, 75min.
Prod.: Andreas Bremer, Script: Sacha Mirzoeff, Bettina Borgfeld, Dir.: Sacha Mirzoeff, Dir. of Phot.: Andreas Bremer, Ted Giffords, Compos.: Barnaby Taylor, Sound: Ted Giffords, Edit.: Darren Flaxstone.
Reinhard Krause, the German head of the Reuters Israeli photo bureau is up against a deadline and facing a moral dilemma. He’s looking at a photo that shows the head of the female suicide bomber still lying on the ground, severed cleanly from her body without a blemish on her face and with no blood to be seen. Does he show this to the world or keep it hidden? “Every picture must tell a story” Reinhard says, but is the world ready for this kind of image? He needs to decide within minutes. Welcome to the everyday difficulties of depicting a story that keeps rolling on with new horrors. This film portrays Reinhard during the last few weeks of his four-year assignment in Israel and unveils the pressured process of a news agency producing the photos we see in papers. Reinhard is working with a well-oiled team made up of both Palestinians and Israelis, many of whom still have never met, as freedom of movement is limited for everyone. Both sides of the war report to the same person. Most of the time Reinhard’s team reports on atrocities they witness and each member has found different ways of coping with the stress. Gil, an Israeli photographer breaks down on his camera after covering an emotional funeral saying that sometimes he feels like an animal chasing after the shots. Ahmed, a Palestinian who was nearly killed on the job, knows that it’s his duty to show the world what is really going on in Gaza and lives and breathes his job. Nir, a young talented photographer in Tel Aviv has learnt to separate the day job and his leisure time and blocks off what he doesn’t want to think about. Abed, a resident in the anarchic West Bank town of Nablus has become a spokesman for local journalists even though he’s had to endure 90 days of curfew before. All of them won’t change their job for love nor money. This film gets behind the world’s oldest news agency to show how the news is made and reported on, from the first ambulance report of an accident in Jerusalem to the front page of the papers the next morning. With unprecedented access Shooting under Fire shows us the full process, highlighting the staggeringly fast digital technology, the difficult morals that await even the toughest, and the extreme lives that people lead in a land in war.
Production Company
National Geographic Channel
Awards
Best reportage (German TV Award, 2005); Prize for the Protection of Human Rights, German Version (Human Rights Award, 2006).
| Mirzoeff, Sacha Sacha Mirzoeff
He directs, produces, shoots and edits international human-interest documentaries with the conviction that real people’s stories surpass fiction. Mirzoeff is also running Bivouac Productions.
Filmography
A Different Ball Game & A Different Ball Game 2 (2001-2003), Hunting the Shark (2002), Working Week (2004), Living the Dream (2004), The Truth about 60s TV (2004), Shooting under Fire (2005), The Dangers of Witchcraft (2006).
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