Directors: Patrick Reed, Michelle Shephard Producers: Patrick Reed, Peter Raymont, Michelle Shephard
Description:
Omar
Khadr—child soldier or unrepentant terrorist? After spending nearly
half his life behind bars, including a decade at the Guantanamo Bay
Detention Centre, Khadr is suddenly released. In 2002, Khadr was
captured by Americans in Afghanistan and charged with war crimes. In
October 2010, Khadr pleaded guilty to five war crimes, including
“murder in violation of the laws of war,” in return for a plea
deal that gave him an eight-year sentence and chance to return to
Canada. Khadr later recanted his confession. His Guantanamo
conviction is being appealed in the US courts. After spending nearly
half his life behind bars, including a decade at Guantanamo, Khadr is
suddenly released. Khadr is the only juvenile ever tried for war
crimes.
Biography: Michelle
Shephard has won Canada’s top journalism’s prizes—a
three-time recipient of the National Newspaper Award and part of a
team that received the Governor General’s Michener Award for Public
Service Journalism. She is the author of Guantanamo's Child: The
Untold Story of Omar Khadr and Decade of Fear: Reporting from
Terrorism's Grey Zone. Shephard was associate producer on the
Oscar-nominated and Peabody Award winning film Under Fire:
Journalists in Combat. She is on the Board of Directors of the
Canadian Journalism Forum on Violence and Trauma and speaks often on
issues of national security and civil rights.
Patrick
Reed has collaborated on several award-winning documentaries. One
of Reed’s first assignments with White Pine was researching and
co-producing the multi-award-winning Shake Hands With The Devil:
The Journey of Roméo Dallaire. Reed’s film Triage followed Dr. James Orbinski back to Somalia and Rwanda where he was
at the centre of far too many life and death decisions during those
country’s years of upheaval. He also directed Tsepong: A Clinic
Called Hope, a cinema vérité chronicle of the work of doctors
and nurses fighting the HIV/AIDS pandemic in Lesotho, Reed recently
completed film Fight Like Soldiers, Die Like Children, shot in
South Sudan, Rwanda and the DR Congo.
Peter
Raymont’s films have received fifty-two international awards
including thirteen Gemini Awards, Gold and Silver Hugos and The
Sesterce d’Argent. His film, Shake Hands with the Devil: The
Journey of Roméo Dallaire received an Emmy for Best Documentary.
His films are informed with a passion for human rights and social
justice. Other films directed by Raymont include A Promise to the
Dead: The Exile Journey of Ariel Dorfman and Genius Within:
The Inner Life of Glenn Gould.
