Syria’s young hero video staged, says filmmaker

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boy caught in the line of fire videoA video that went viral this week, believed to have been shot in Syria, of a boy caught in the line of fire who then pretended to be dead only to spur back up to rescue a girl, turned out to be fake.

Lard Kleberg, the short clip’s director, told the BBC that he had shot the film in Malta this summer.

“If I could make a film and pretend it was real, people would share it and react with hope,” he said.

“We shot it in Malta in May this year on a set that was used for other famous movies like Troy and Gladiator,” Klevberg said, adding that he deliberately presented the film as reality in hope of stirring debate on children in conflict zones.

The men heard in the background were Syrian refugees living in Malta while the boy and girl were professional actors native to the island state.

“By publishing a clip that could appear to be authentic we hoped to take advantage of a tool that’s often used in war; make a video that claims to be real. We wanted to see if the film would get attention and spur debate, first and foremost about children and war. We also wanted to see how the media would respond to such a video,” he told BBC Trending.

The film even received funding from the Norwegian Film Institute (NFI) and the Audio and Visual Fund from Arts Council Norway in October, two institutions Klevberg claims were aware of his intention to not clearly state whether the film is real or not.

“The children surviving gunshots was supposed to send small clues that it was not real,” producer John Einar Hagen said.

Al Arabiya

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One response to “Syria’s young hero video staged, says filmmaker”

  1. Hind Abyad Avatar

    Ha ha.. Al Arabiya and West allies media, that’s an expensive piece of face-saving public relations diplomacy for your pro-war propaganda lies, but you’re rich.
    Why say it’s Syria? OK there’s war going on there..but why in Arabic if it’s in Malta? Why those ignorant English speaking papers don’ know that Allahuakbar is Foreign Jihadis, not Syrians..the text is gone, but it said that “children were running from Syrian Army snipers”..not propaganda much was it? (Army snipers are shooting children in Gaza).
    http://english.alarabiya.net/en/webtv/reports/2014/11/12/Heroic-Syrian-boy-saves-young-girl-from-sniper.html

    http://www.theguardian.com/world/video/2014/nov/12/syrian-boy-saves-girl-from-army-sniper-video

    Mirror UK-http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/footage-syrian-hero-boy-dodging-4633019

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