Why this film
A few years ago I was introduced to Reed Brody and Souleymane Guengueng. I met them at the office of Human Rights Watch in the Empire State building in New York. The two men were sitting under a world map in Brody’s office with black and white mug shots of dictators all over the map. They pointed at one and looked at me and said: “this is one of the most brutal dictators you have probably never heard of: Hissene Habré of Chad and we want to bring this man to justice”.

I saw a film in these two men and their quest to change the system in which dictators could kill and get away with it. Both are tremendously driven, the one believing in the law, and the other one in God.

I like to observe and explore where people come from, why they do what they do. In this case I wanted to know more about the backgrounds of Reed and Souleymane, I was moved by their friendship and curious about their mission. One is a survivor who lost his sight in the prisons in Chad and the other is an idealistic Jewish lawyer from Brooklyn, whose father survived the holocaust. Who is this man, why is he sacrificing money and his family, is he a Don Quixote, or is he vain, arrogant or just naive?

Why the film is relevant
I think ‘International Justice’, although an abstract concept, is the issue for the coming years. It is the hot potato for the US because they don’t like to see former heads of state being sent to other countries to stand trial.

Everybody knows that at this moment innocent people are killed in Darfur. however, for the longest time, no one did anything, not the UN, not the Europeans, nor the United States, but there is ‘international justice’. It is the ultimate hope to break the cycle of impunity. And the Habré case is the test case.

Themes I like to explore in films
I knew I wanted to explore the international political context in which their stories took place. It was crucial for me to show in this film that the stories were set against the backdrop of ambivalent American and Western foreign politics. Morality and justice are murky waters to swim in. The more I started to be involved, the more layers I saw in this story: religion, sacrifice and the miscommunication between people, countries and continents.

Three years of filming
In a way I understand Reed’s drive: I was nearly as obsessed with the film as he was with the Habré case. I remembered waking up in the hospital after a surgery and was ordered to stay in bed for a week, but when I saw an email from Reed that Habré was arrested, I wanted to leave immediately. With no budget for the film yet, I decided to go to Dakar that same evening. I didn’t know how the story would go, but somehow I felt the importance of the story and I wanted to make the film no matter what.

There were a lot of bumps in the road during the three years that I worked on the film. Every time we planned a trip to Chad, the rebels were on their way to D’Njamena, the capital from which Habré reigned and each time we had to cancel the trip. I knew I had no film without Chad, the country which was crucial , as it was the heart of the film, but finally we were able to go and film in all the necessary places.

One of the most important and satisfying moments was the day when I filmed the widows in the desert. Their cry for justice made a deep imprint on me: at least they didn’t have to keep their stories for themselves, finally their stories were heard and hopefully will be heard by a lot of people who have no idea who Hissène Habré is.