Emmy-winning documentary maker Deeyah Khan – whose latest film America’s Veterans: the War Within airs this weekend on ITV in the UK – has warned that the rise in anti-immigrant sentiment in the UK over the last two decades is having “a pernicious, profound effect” on documentary making in Britain.
Khan tells Deadline: “The rise in anti-immigrant rhetoric isn’t just a political shift, it’s cultural. Over time, it changes who feels visible and valued, whose stories are judged worthy of compassion, who gets to hold the camera, and what someone feels comfortable saying.”
She continues: “Since 9/11, we’ve witnessed a slow and steady-burn dehumanisation of immigrants, especially migrants of colour in Europe, Australia and North America. As an immigrant and woman of colour, that enrages and concerns me. And as s a filmmaker, it frustrates me because it interferes with the creative process itself.”
It also motivates Khan, whose eight films have between them won two Emmys, two Peabody Awards, a Bafta, a Royal Television Society award, and the Rory Peck Award, among others. “I started making films to challenge the narrow ways stories about minorities were told, often only as victims or villains. But because stories that include topics related to immigrant communities are so charged, I constantly ask myself: am I telling stories with the full human truth or just meeting institutional and national biases? Will I ever tell a story without calculating how it will be perceived in a climate of growing xenophobia?
Her recent work has focused on disenfranchised, often white men. In 2017’s White Right: Meeting the Enemy, she shadowed leaders of America’s biggest neo-Nazi organisation. Her latest film America’s Veterans: the War Within, exploresthe dehumanising effect of conflict on combatants.
Khan explains: “I’ve been fortunate to have the trust and creative freedom to tell the stories I care about at ITV, thanks to Tom Giles at Exposure and Kevin Lygo. But I remember, at the beginning of my career, I wanted to make a film about an Italian pianist who collected music composed by prisoners in Nazi concentration camps and explore the impulse to create even in captivity. A commissioner told me it didn’t seem like a natural fit for me, and suggested I consider a film about forced marriage or FGM instead. Now, I care deeply about those issues, but it was clear I was being confined to a narrow storytelling lane. I don’t like being confined and I think that’s reflected in the films’ subject matter.”
Khan says that documentary is more important than ever. “It isn’t just art – it’s archive, it’s intervention, and at times, it’s a lifeline. We need to document truth in an age of distortion. And we need to re-humanise those who have been so thoroughly reduced that cruelty, humiliation and indifference toward their suffering have become socially acceptable. To me, storytelling is a radical act of empathy. It’s about creating space for people to be seen in their full humanity – and maybe, through those stories, we begin to recognise ourselves in one another. That matters now more than ever.”
America’s Veterans: The War Within, airs on Sunday June 15th in the UK, as part of ITV’s Exposure strand.
The post Emmy-Winning Documentary Maker Warns: Rise In Anti-Immigrant Sentiment Is Hurting Filmmaking In UK appeared first on Deadline.
