Operation Filmmaker is a unique, multifaceted documentary about an Iraqi film student, Muthana Mohmed, who is brought to Prague by actor and director Liev Schreiber. Schreiber saw Muthana in an MTV documentary and decided to help the young filmmaker, whose film school was destroyed in the war, by inviting him to work on the set of Everything Is Illuminated. Director Nina Davenport was hired to document what was presumably a feel good story. But what transpires is a complex and unexpected series of events that makes for fascinating viewing.

At first, Muthana is given rather mundane tasks that he resents. Some of these tasks (getting coffee and snacks for the producers) would seem ridiculous to someone coming from a war torn nation. Although he seems ungrateful, one can imagine his disappointment in being brought to work on a Hollywood movie set only to be given such mundane and possibly demeaning tasks. However, he is given the opportunity to do some editing work which he blows off by going to a party. These two early situations set-up the push and pull of the film between Muthana’s self-destructive attitude and the exploitation of his situation by many of the people involved in “saving” him from Iraq.

Operation Filmmaker takes off in an unexpected direction when Muthana’s work on Everything Is Illuminated is finished. At first, he wants to go home, partly because he doesn’t see any other option despite being encouraged by friends and family to stay away from Iraq. When his visa is extended, Muthana suddenly changes his mind and decides to stay much to the apparent disappointment of his benefactors. This sudden change of plans becomes a burden for Davenport as well because she gets sucked into a story that no longer has a foreseeable conclusion.

One of the issues with any documentary is the distance the filmmakers keep from their subjects. Operation Filmmaker opens as a conventional documentary but becomes something altogether different as Muthana provokes Davenport into giving advice and eventually financial support. Often, the intrusion of the director is often that, an intrusion. But in Operation Filmmaker, Davenport’s involvement speaks to the questionable ethics of the entire endeavor giving the film unexpected depth.