Tomris Laffly “Are you a good person or a bad person?” This is the question that documentarian Meg Smaker poses to one of her subjects in a quietly reflective moment of “Jihad Rehab,” her thought-provoking film about Saudi Arabia’s controversial rehabilitation center for radicalized extremists. “I don’t know,” comes the response, from a man with a hefty résumé of terrorist activities. “That’s your job to figure out.”But Smaker is on a different mission in her searing film, the very existence of which often feels like a miracle and an interrogative act of defiance.
Not seeking clear-cut answers about what separates good from evil, “Jihad Rehab” is more interested in the why of things, asking questions and soberly, searchingly assembling its discoveries through unprecedented access.
That doesn’t mean Smaker absolves anyone of the crimes they’ve committed — that’s not really her job. But as a former firefighter who moved to Afghanistan just months after 9/11 to educate herself on a part of the world she knew nothing about — studying both Arabic and Islamic theory during later years of residing in Yemen — she brings a unique temperament to her unprecedented project, fusing insider expertise with outsider curiosity.
To this end, she wonders who these men are as human beings and whether there could be a realistic place in society for them.
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