Ken Loach © AFP
Ken Loach: “A film will never change things in Irak”
In Competition with his feature film Route Irish about the conflict in Iraq, British director Ken Loach talked to journalists this afternoon. Selected comments.
Ken Loach, explaining the basic premise of Route Irish:
The war in Iraq is a theme that I have always wanted to develop in one of my films. The question was how to do it because it is a terrible crime that has been perpetrated against the Iraqi people. The challenge was to find a thread to the story that would reveal what has happened there. Today, indignation alone is not enough. Unfortunately, a film can never take the place of a political movement to change things in Iraq.
Paul Laverty (script writer), on the mercenaries hired for the Iraq conflict:
My research for this film led me to talk to mercenaries who have fought in Iraq. I realised that they consider themselves nothing more than subcontractors in this war and that in this capacity, they cannot be prosecuted for their crimes. These people are mourning the loss of themselves. Today they are searching to discover what they once were.
Ken Loach, about water boarding, an act of torture that consists of dunking the victim’s head in water to get confessions. It has been used by the Americans and the British in Iraq:
Water boarding can be summed up as a battle between the torturer and his victim. The people who have made this a routine practice are today the same ones who are demanding loud and clear that the human rights convention must be respected. All this has been done in our name. To film this scene, we really subjected the lead actor to the act of torture, because the tube we had planned to use to allow him to breathe didn’t work.
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