THE RORY PECK AWARDS 2007
Sponsored by Sony
Sean Langan - British
Fighting the TalibanWinner: The Rory Peck Award for Features
An eye -witness account of the battle to retake the strategically critical town of Garmser in Helmand Province. An assault expected to take 24 hours leads to six days of attacks and counter-attacks, casualties on both sides and a record number of NATO air strikes. Sean Langan documents the bravery and increasing exhaustion of the soldiers as their supplies of food and ammunition run low, and their morale sinks even lower.
The judges thought the film was important and influential.
“The rapport he builds with the soldiers adds to the incredible insight of this piece. It is an enormous achievement – particularly for someone working alone.”
Cameraman's Comment
“The MOD effectively banned embeds last summer, barring journalists from travelling to the frontlines and containing them to bases or safe areas. But with much cajoling and arm-twisting, I managed to convince a British commander who let me embed with the Afghan forces who were going with the British. That is how I ended up in Garmser, filming one of the most intense and longest battles British forces have been in since the end of the Korean war. I ran out of tape at about the same time as they ran out of food and ammunition.”
Biography
Sean Langan specialises in video-diary style documentaries, working alone for long periods of time, often in hostile environments. His two films on Afghanistan under the Taliban, Tea with the Taliban and Kabul Vice, were nominated for a Bafta and Grierson Award, and established his non-conventional reporting style. With his background in the Middle East, and working with extreme Islamic groups, Sean Langan has focused on the War on Terror since 2001, gaining the first interviews with the Islamic militants in Iraq fighting U.S troops. In Mission Accomplished, his film about the war in Iraq, Langan was also one of the first journalists to reveal the torture in Abu Ghraib, and spent time in Fallujha and Ramadi with the resistance. He returned to Afghanistan last year, to see how the Taliban have returned, five years after the War on Terror began.
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