TNT Radio host Patrick Henningsen speaks with award-winning documentary filmmaker Hala Bou Saab, who talks about her docu-series featuring Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, and why his story has sparked the imagination of people all over the world.
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today's news talk radio T&T welcome back ladies and gentlemen welcome back to this live broadcast on Patrick Kennedy senior host we are streaming out live right now across every major platform in the known modern world here at T&T today's news talk appreciates you guys especially our team on the back side and also down in the T&T chatroom our thriving community there great to have you guys with us now I want to switch gears right now now we talked about the Assange case fantastic scenes of seeing him reuniting with his family I'm absolutely incredible many of us who've been covering the story for many years are relieved and really happy to see a that he's safe and he's healthy and he's out of this maximum security hellhole in southeast London known as Belmarsh prison what a terrible place to be especially when there's actually no conviction against you held arbitrarily for it was indefinitely we didn't know when he'd actually get out but he did now there's been some great reporting on this and of course there's been some great documentary films there's a new one the timing of this of course is is great that this film will be coming out we have the filmmaker with us today award-winning documentary filmmaker Hala Busab is joining us right now on the live link Hala thank you so much for joining us thank you for having me thank you Patrick now Hala I wanted to first of all we'll we'll play a clip a trailer for your film on al-Mayadine TV an excellent Arab language and also English language broadcasting network internationally certainly competing without Jazira in that department and the name of the film is called man versus an empire and this is about Julian Assange and his battle and also the future of journalism why is this story so important and why did you choose to make this film Hala you know Patrick Julian Assange founded a new school in journalism and for for us as the Lebanese we really appreciate what what Assange did we have our we have a great Lebanese politician and philosopher called Antoine Saadi said let me say it in Arabic and then I'll translate it in Afikum poo wa la fa'alat la reya ratoishe tarihe that means there is within you a power which is you which if you activated would change the course of history Julian Assange case translated this power after 15 years of sacrifices revealing the truth and resistance to justice and by supporting this case we are changing the course of history through you know the great protests all over the world and we are really changing it yes and also just the the incredible commitment to to the truth wiki leaks can boast an almost perfect record of accuracy what it vets and what it publishes no retractions although there's pressure being put by the US government on this plea deal to remove some content on the site as a condition of this release we're told we'll get more details on that on a future segment Hala but we do have a trailer from that film we're going to go ahead and roll this this is from Hala's documentary which is going to be well which has already aired on almighty and certainly becomes more relevant going forward let's go ahead and roll this for the haala salamat al-mashil habikah we have tried hard to make sure that this material does not put innocence at harm documents that affect every country in the world every country in this world where one against the immoral blockade in the courts and in the european parliament in the european parliament that's a clip from a man versus an empire there and the filmmaker we have with us here hala boost stops joining us as well now hala it looks like a fantastic film of course and it's great that you're able to bring the story to the arab language media market as well and so you mentioned about the the the lebanese point of view on this which of course i can see how that would be the case there are some great journalists in lebanon has a great tradition of media and reportage through through the civil war right to the present day that some of the best geopolitical analysts are in fact in bayroot um so that's uh something you can post but how about the rest of the middle east the rest of the arab world how do they view the wiki leaks story i suppose some countries or people might be more interested than others uh your thoughts on this for me i think arab press isn't wasn't expressive and it's solidarity with assanj uh rightful case due to the u.s influence they don't have the courage to to to to help or to to be with assanj case um as almighty in we supporting assanj case and press freedom globally you know metric we have two martyrs from almighty in uh they um farahomer and drabia mamari were assassinated by the israeli army during this ongoing genocide in gazaon so you know that almighty in has two martius uh farahomer and drabia mamari who were assassinated by uh by the israeli army during this ongoing genocide and as almighty mr assanjitudasio of almighty in we have a proverb saying always with a human with a human everywhere and all times malinsan fikul makan so uh we consider assanj one the most important symbol symbols for the global media and we didn't deal with assanj case as purely documentary work but rather on the basis of international battle against injustice so uh it was an honor for me to produce uh and direct uh docu series about assanj and his uh battle uh towards uh and i think we owe him a lot after all these 15 years we owe assanj at least to talk about his case to document for the new generation generation what happened with assanj no is uh it's an extraordinary story and i think we need to keep telling it uh there'll be more details coming out forthcoming as he's been released there's no gag order on him uh he will be speaking i assume to the public about uh what's really happened behind the scenes and his experience and also uh shedding some light on some of these controversial areas that we just haven't heard enough on so we're looking forward to Julian assanj re-entering the conversation in the global political scene and that's something that uh i'm very excited about uh hala busab award-winning documentary filmmaker uh heard docu series man versus an empire featuring Julian assanj fantastic work hala and uh we'll hopefully speak to you soon thank you can i add something please sure go ahead yes i hope one day we me and you go and meet assanj and complete the docu series for the fourth episode maybe and he will tell us what will happen i hopefully me and you meet this is through you uh this is um a message to Julian assanj over here i hope he can uh the message will uh he will receive the message well hopefully hopefully yes and uh yeah of course it'll be a great honor uh to do that with you hala so uh hopefully we can uh meet the universal make that happen we hope but um again great work and uh we'll be uh reposting uh links to your film on all of our channels as well so much appreciated uh for your great work thank you so much thank you so much Patrick and hope it is sweet to see you on Lebanon soon yep that would be fantastic so uh we'll definitely would definitely keep that on our diary potentially thank you very much there she goes ladies and gentlemen hala busab award-winning documentary filmmaker fantastic network almighty one of the great cutting-edge geopolitical international news networks right now on the scene definitely an emerging force in this conversation look what we'll do in the moment is let's take a brief break here with the network and come back for our closing segment here at TNT today's news talk We'll be right back.
