| The Forever Prisoner | |
|---|---|
 Poster | |
| Directed by | Alex Gibney |
| Produced by |
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| Cinematography |
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| Edited by | Alexis Johnson |
| Music by | Will Bates |
Production company | Jigsaw Productions HBO Documentary Films |
| Distributed by | HBO |
Release date | December 6, 2021 (United States) |
Running time | 119 minutes |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
The Forever Prisoner is a 2021 documentary film directed by Alex Gibney.
The film details the treatment of Abu Zubaydah, a Saudi Arabian detainee held at CIA blacksites and later Guantanamo Bay. [1] [2] [3] [4]
The Forever Prisoner won the News and Documentary Emmy Award for Outstanding Investigative Documentary at the 43rd News and Documentary Emmy Awards in 2022. [5]
Extrajudicial prisoners of the United States, in the context of the early twenty-first century War on Terrorism, refers to foreign nationals the United States detains outside of the legal process required within United States legal jurisdiction. In this context, the U.S. government is maintaining torture centers, called black sites, operated by both known and secret intelligence agencies. Such black sites were later confirmed by reports from journalists, investigations, and from men who had been imprisoned and tortured there, and later released after being tortured until the CIA was comfortable they had done nothing wrong, and had nothing to hide.
Philip Alexander Gibney is an American documentary film director and producer. In 2010, Esquire magazine said Gibney "is becoming the most important documentarian of our time."
The Guantanamo Bay detention camp is a United States military prison within the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, also referred to as Gitmo, on the coast of Guantánamo Bay in Cuba. As of March 2022, of the 780 people detained there since January 2002 when the military prison first opened after the September 11 attacks, 741 had been transferred elsewhere, 30 remained there, and 9 had died while in custody.
Khairullah Said Wali Khairkhwa is the Afghan Minister of Information and Culture and a former Minister of the Interior. After the fall of the Taliban government in 2001, he was held at the United States Guantanamo Bay detainment camp in Cuba for 12 years. He was released in late May 2014 in a prisoner exchange that involved Bowe Bergdahl and the Taliban five. Press reports have referred to him as "Mullah" and "Maulavi", two different honorifics for referring to senior Muslim clerics.
The Battle of Qala-i-Jangi was a six-day military engagement following an uprising of enemy combatants/prisoners-of-war on November 25, 2001. The battle took place between November 25 and December 1, 2001, in northern Afghanistan. It followed the intervention by United States-led coalition forces to overthrow the Taliban's Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, which had been harboring al-Qaeda operatives.
Taxi to the Dark Side is a 2007 American documentary film directed by Alex Gibney, and produced by Gibney, Eva Orner, and Susannah Shipman. It won the 2007 Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature. It focuses on the December 2002 killing of an Afghan taxi driver named Dilawar, who was beaten to death by American soldiers while being held in extrajudicial detention and interrogated at a black site at Bagram air base.
Elizabeth Freya Garbus is an American documentary film director and producer. Notable documentaries Garbus has made are The Farm: Angola, USA,Ghosts of Abu Ghraib,Bobby Fischer Against the World,Love, Marilyn,What Happened, Miss Simone?, and Becoming Cousteau. She is co-founder and co-director of the New York City-based documentary film production company Story Syndicate.
Guantanamo's Child is a 2015 Canadian documentary film. Directed by Patrick Reed and Michelle Shephard based on Shephard's 2009 book Guantanamo's Child: The Untold Story of Omar Khadr, the film profiles Omar Khadr, a Canadian citizen whose conviction on disputed war crimes charges and incarceration at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp has been a prominent political issue in Canada.
Andrew A. Kosove is an American film and television producer who has produced 35 films. He was nominated for an Academy Award for the film The Blind Side. Alongside his producing partner, Broderick Johnson, he is the co-founder and co-CEO of Alcon Entertainment, a Los Angeles-based wholly independent film and television production and financing company. In addition to his career in the entertainment industry, Kosove is also an accomplished and avid marathon runner and triathlete. He finished third in the Ironman Executive Challenge in Ironman Coeur d'Alene in 2010. He competed and finished the Ironman World Championship in Kona, Hawaii in 2012.
Separate facilities exist to provide for Guantanamo detainees' medical care.
The Guantanamo Trap is a documentary film about four individuals whose lives were changed by their association with the Guantanamo Bay detention camps. The film was directed by Thomas Wallner and won the special jury prize at the 2011 Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival.
Mea Maxima Culpa: Silence in the House of God is a 2012 documentary film directed by Alex Gibney. The film details the first known protest against clerical sex abuse in the United States by four deaf men. It features the voices of actors Jamey Sheridan, Chris Cooper, Ethan Hawke and John Slattery, who provide the voices of the deaf interviewees.
We Steal Secrets: The Story of WikiLeaks is a 2013 American independent documentary film about the organization established by Julian Assange, and people involved in the collection and distribution of secret information and media by whistleblowers. Directed by Alex Gibney, it covers a period of several decades, and includes background material. Gibney received his fifth nomination for Best Documentary Screenplay from the Writers Guild of America Awards for this film.
Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief is a 2015 documentary film about Scientology. Directed by Alex Gibney and produced by HBO, it is based on Lawrence Wright's book Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood and the Prison of Belief (2013). The film premiered at the 2015 Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah. It received widespread praise from critics and was nominated for seven Emmy Awards, winning three, including Best Documentary. It also received a 2015 Peabody Award and won the award for Best Documentary Screenplay from the Writers Guild of America.
Citizen K is a 2019 documentary film about Mikhail Khodorkovsky, written and directed by Alex Gibney. It is a film about post-Soviet Russia featuring Khodorkovsky, Anton Drel, Maria Logan, Alexei Navalny, Tatyana Lysova, Leonid Nevzlin, Igor Malashenko and Derk Sauer.
A Thousand Cuts is a 2020 Philippine-American documentary film about Maria Ressa, the founder of the online news site Rappler. Directed by Ramona Diaz, it explores the conflicts between the press and the Filipino government under President Rodrigo Duterte.
Divide and Conquer: The Story of Roger Ailes is a 2018 American documentary film, directed and produced by Alexis Bloom. It follows the rise and fall of conservative media mogul Roger Ailes. Alex Gibney serves as an executive producer under his Jigsaw Productions banner.
The First Wave is a 2021 American documentary film, directed and produced by Matthew Heineman. The film follows a hospital in New York City, as it battles the COVID-19 pandemic. Alex Gibney serves as an executive producer.
Malfunction: The Dressing Down of Janet Jackson is a 2021 American documentary television film, directed by Jodi Gomes and produced by Left/Right.
According to UN experts, the Guantanamo Bay detention facility in Cuba is a site of "unparalleled notoriety" and has been condemned as a site of "unrelenting human rights violations." The facility has been holding prisoners for over 20 years. A document released by the Amnesty International reported ongoing and historic human rights violations at the Guantánamo Bay detention facility.