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LAKHDAR
Documentary Film

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As a filmmaker, I am directing LAKHDAR, a feature-length documentary film on a Guantánamo survivor's story and quest for justice. To this day, there has been neither meaningful justice for the hundreds of innocent Guantánamo survivors nor any accountability for U.S. violations of international humanitarian treaties like the Geneva Conventions that prohibit torture and cruel treatment. The film offers an intimate look into how racialized practices of torture, detention, and confinement, sanctioned under the so-called global 'War on Terror,' have affected the lives of Arab, South-West Asian, South Asian, and Muslim communities in the U.S. and the Global South. Scroll below for the film's sample reel and description.

DIRECTORS: Amir Aziz and Michael Niederman

PRODUCTION COMPANY: Witnesses, LLC

SUPPORTED BY: International Documentary Association, AXS Film Fund​

ANTICIPATED RELEASE DATE: 2026

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An Algerian citizen, Lakhdar Boumediène was a charitable aid worker for the Bosnian Red Crescent Society in 2001, living a peaceful life in Sarajevo with his wife and their two young daughters. In October that year, he was wrongfully accused, with five other Algerians, of plotting a terror attack against the U.S. embassy.

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Kidnapped, shackled, and renditioned to Guantánamo Bay Detention Camp in Cuba, Lakhdar was detained there from January 2002 to May 2009, with no charges ever filed against him. He endured beatings, interrogations, and uncertainty about whether he would ever see or even speak with his family again. Steadfast in his innocence, he embarked on prolonged hunger strikes to protest his mistreatment and was subjected to painful force-feeding sessions, strapped into a ‘torture chair’ specifically built for that purpose.​

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In 2008, Lakhdar accomplished an extraordinary feat: He prevailed in a landmark U.S. Supreme Court case that bore his name, Boumediène v. Bush, which held that Guantánamo detainees have a constitutional right to challenge their detention in federal court. He then appeared before a George W. Bush–appointed federal judge, Richard J. Leon, who reviewed the government’s case and ultimately found that it had none.

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It had taken the better part of seven years – and extraordinary courage and perseverance – for Lakhdar to get his day in court. But once he did, it took just a few weeks for it to become clear that he never should have been detained in the first place.​

In May 2009, Lakhdar was finally reunited with his wife and daughters in France, where they were to be resettled. Their tearful reunion in Paris, though joyous, was marked by his sorrow at having missed seven precious years of his two young daughters’ lives.

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The name Boumediène has since become synonymous with the principles of justice and due process: Boumediène v. Bush marked a historic legal milestone enshrining the right of non-U.S. citizens to be protected from unlawful and indefinite detention. Where Korematsu has become a shorthand for the United States’ willingness to abandon the Constitution in wartime, Boumediène represents a refusal to do so, albeit one that came far too late.

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​​​Lakhdar now lives with his wife and three younger children, resuming their lives in a quiet village perched along the French Riviera, a short drive from his two older children and his grandchildren.

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Lakhdar has managed to rebuild a life for his family, despite everything they went through. But he still bears scars, physical and emotional, from Guantánamo. He still wonders how the U.S. government could have thought he was a terrorist and whether they would ever offer him an explanation or any measure of justice for what he went through.

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The film is birthed from Lakhdar Boumediène’s powerful will to tell his incredible story of survival to the world and his desire to stop it from happening to others in the future. As the man who won a landmark Supreme Court case against a sitting U.S. president, Lakhdar knows the immense weight his name carries -- or should.

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We follow him in present-day Nice as he rebuilds his life, navigates France’s culture and customs, and experiences fatherhood for the second time. We listen to him and his family share the story of what they went through. We follow him as he attempts to seek an official apology and some measure of justice from the U.S. government.​​ Many Americans regard Guantánamo as a closed chapter in history, despite its continued existence, and many members of younger generations do not even recognize the word ‘Guantánamo.’

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Have we learned anything from Boumediène, the case, or from Boumediène, the man?

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The film’s stakes are no less than combatting the dehumanization that makes atrocities like Guantánamo possible. As the film follow Lakhdar in his life post-Guantánamo, it examines important issues from the immense physical and psychological effects of torture to whether men like Lakhdar could ever hope for redress – or even just an apology – from the United States.

 

Vimeo thumbnail image courtesy of Rebecca Marshall Photography at rebecca-marshall.com

© Designed by Amir Aziz. All rights reserved.

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