Dirty Wars

The journalist Jeremy Scahill investigates a night raid on a village in Afghanistan. The official account describes it as a firefight; the villagers describe something else, and pregnant women are among the dead. Scahill tries to find which service the unit that carried it out belonged to. The trail leads to the special operations command. Then the same unit's name appears in Yemen, in Somalia and elsewhere. The narrative moves out of a war zone into countries where no war has been declared. Rick Rowley directs. The documentary dates from 2013. Among the cases at its centre is the killing of an American citizen by drone and, soon after, the killing of his son in the same way; the documentary speaks with the father's family. Its method is first person; Scahill describes his own investigation, and that choice was criticised. It was nominated for best documentary at the Oscars. The real matter it sets out is accountability; the narrative asks under what legal frame these operations are carried out and gets no answer. It was released together with Scahill's book on the same subject. Its limit is form; the narrative is at times built like a thriller, which sits at odds with the weight of the subject. Who it is for: people who watch investigative journalism documentary. Who it is not for: the narrative is personalised, the subject heavy, and the information dense.