DVD Review: Meeting ISIL

I’d been deliberately avoiding all news reports of the group called ISIS, in an effort to remain relatively sane. When I hear the word “Isis,” I prefer to think of that excellent Bob Dylan song from the Desire album. But while ignorance may be bliss, my love of documentary films overrode my desire for such bliss, and I popped Meeting ISIL into my DVD player. While the DVD cover has the title as Meeting ISIS, the title on screen is Meeting ISIL. ISIL stands for Islamic State Of Iraq And The Levant, while ISIS stands for Islamic State Of Iraq And Syria, but both are the same group.

Meeting ISIL is a documentary which takes a look at the group, and at the various other factions in the war in Syria. The film opens with a man talking about an operation involving a truck, and then in a wide shot we see the truck explode. The question I immediately had was, Where did this footage come from? That’s a question I had throughout the film, one which is never really answered. A narrator provides just a bit of background information on the area, and then, as we see soldiers letting a car pass, says that soldiers at checkpoints act differently “when strangers with cameras are present.” But why were they allowed to film? And who is doing the filming? Then we see different footage of trucks being stopped at a checkpoint on a Syrian road, and the narrator tells us things look different “when the camera belongs to the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant.” And indeed, we see the drivers questioned and then executed on the side of the road. But again, there is no mention of where exactly this footage came from. And there is brief footage of an operation at night, but again with no explanation of what it is exactly that we’re seeing.

What is interesting is that operations are recorded and shared on the internet in social media forums (including You Tube and Twitter, and perhaps that is where some footage comes from). Members of ISIL use the internet to get their messages across. The narrator tells us, “Syria has been the most socially mediated civil conflict in history, and the ISIL knows how to use the social media networks to recruit fighters.” It’s also interesting to learn that the al-Nusra Front and ISIL run all the basic services in certain areas, controlling food distribution and even running schools. There is quite a bit of interesting footage, but the film needs to provide more information. I didn’t have enough background information to fully appreciate what I was seeing. The film fails to even define some terms that are used often, such as “Sharia” and “Caliphate.”

The narrator tells us the filmmakers were allowed to film in one of the al-Nusra Front’s training camps in Syria, and one of the men interviewed there is from Morocco (men from many different nations have come there to fight). But the footage of the training camp shows just three guys walking across dirt holding guns. There is no real training, no one there to train them, at least none that we can see, and not even any evidence of a camp. It’s weird. It seems posed. There is also an interview with a man named Abu al-Hefz Sury, who was a member of Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, but now is fighting with the al-Nusra Front. He holds a gun throughout the interview, and is at some kind of post somewhere. Oddly, the voice of the interviewer is disguised throughout the film. Why? It seems odd that it’s the filmmaker who wishes to remain hidden. The film has no credits whatsoever. So how are we to trust the information? Who made this film?  By the way, this film is less than an hour long, but interestingly there is a two-hour version of it available on You Tube. Perhaps that longer version provides more information? It doesn’t provide any credits (I checked).

Meeting ISIL is scheduled to be released on DVD on September 29, 2015 through MVD Visual. The DVD contains no special features.