The acclaimed Australian film-maker Phillip Noyce is being paid by the Saudi regime to make a feature film portraying the repressive state’s narcotics officers as heroes.
The Watchful Eyes, based on a real Saudi ministry of interior narcotics case, is billed as a dramatic depiction of the “heroism of security men in combating drugs”.
Saudi authorities executed 356 people last year, including 243 for drug-related cases, and analysts say an increase in the kingdom’s execution rate is largely due to its “war on drugs”.
Noyce has enjoyed a decades-long career with directing credits including the 1970s classic Newsfront, Dead Calm, Rabbit-Proof Fence, Patriot Games, Clear and Present Danger and The Bone Collector. […]
Noyce said he had accepted the job “for the challenge of working outside my comfort zone” and for the opportunity “to investigate a previously closed society” but did not address specific questions about the ethics of making a film paid for by the Saudi regime.
Joey Shea, a Saudi Arabia senior researcher for Human Rights Watch, said the Saudi government used its huge investments in sport and entertainment as part of a strategy to whitewash its human rights record.
“Given the subject matter of this film from what’s publicly available, combined with the reality of the rights abuses that have been so inextricably linked with this new war on drugs by the Saudi government, it’s really, really disturbing the role that these narratives may play in covering up the reality of these executions that have just been served the last few years,” Shea said.
Yeah, this looks like the same sort of bullshit as the Riyadh Comedy Festival, and I’m as disappointed in Noyce as I was in some of the people who did thar. Noyce himself doesn’t seem overly hyped about his own work:
Noyce described The Watchful Eyes as “a low-budget kidnapping thriller”.
“Gritty and raw and shot entirely in Arabic, I don’t think the movie will attract any tourists to Saudi Arabia,” he said.
Asked about the country’s human rights record and executions for drug offences, Noyce said: “I guess the story could be edited to send an anti-drug message, but the story I shot was told from the highly emotional point of view of the lead detective in the hunt for a missing child.
“Surprisingly, Sela never once interfered from a creative point of view.”
Probably not, cos I imagine they wouldn’t have needed to; they would’ve made sure they had all the creative control right from the beginning. And if Sela weren’t doing that, someone in government/the royal family would’ve been. I know that in real terms there’s been any number of Hollywood films over the decades that have performed the same function, but they don’t seem as bad as this does…
