Oscar Nominee James Longley Wins at Ji.hlava, Sets Rohingya Genocide Film Next

James Longley, a double Oscar nominee, won Ji.hlava Documentary Film Festival's top award on Saturday for "Mohabat" — and told Variety his next film will tackle the Rohingya genocide. Next year marks the 10th anniversary of the 2017 genocide.

"I've already filmed act one of this project, working with Diane Weyermann at Participant Media, when they were still around," Longley said at the Czech festival, referring to the executive who died in 2021 and the company shut down in 2024. "[It's] a genocide that's formally recognized as such by the United States, the EU and the British government, yet, surprisingly, no documentary feature has been produced on this subject. I'm uniquely prepared to make that film."

That's a strong claim. Longley's track record supports it.

What is 'Mohabat' about?

The film is set in Afghanistan and follows 12-year-old Mohabat, who tries to hold his family together under Taliban rule after a U.S. drone strike kills his father while he is out hunting. Longley dates the strike precisely in political terms.

"This happened during the first Trump administration, when Mike Pompeo was in charge of the drone program," he said. "During the 20-year war, such events were common and untold numbers of civilians were killed and forgotten far from the foreign journalists in Kabul. Mohabat did not want his father to be forgotten, and so he stuck with us patiently throughout two years of filming."

The boy's father, Longley added, was "a poor man with a wife and seven children, who worked as a tea seller in a large market on the edge of Kabul." Mohabat believed the crew would do justice to his memory.

During location scouting, the team visited orphanages filled with children who had lost parents in the war. "The sons of Afghan policemen martyred in Taliban suicide bombings share their bread with the sons of martyred Taliban fighters," Longley said. "Many of them wanted to tell their stories. That was never an issue."

He recalled that Elham, one of Mohabat's friends, "told us specifically that he was waiting for a foreign journalist to come and talk to them about what they had seen during the war and what they thought about it."

Why children carry his films

Longley, Oscar-nominated for "Iraq in Fragments" and "Sari's Mother," has built a career on films about and for young people, including "Angels Are Made of Light." He explained the method: "When we are children, we experience the world most directly – and for the first time." Showing a Western audience Afghanistan, Iraq or Gaza, he said, a child's perspective fits best because viewers are "like a child in those countries, experiencing something new." Adults, he noted dryly, rarely register: "I've included many adults in my documentaries, but most audience members never remember them after watching the film."

He cites Vittorio De Sica, Abbas Kiarostami, Majid Majidi and François Truffaut as influences — directors who "treat the lives of their child characters with great seriousness." In a restrictive space, a child protagonist is a practical asset too. "You'll get permission to make a film about a kid a 100 times before you will get permission to make a film about an adult," he said.

He could not film women. "It would have caused a local scandal if one of the village women had appeared in our film. She would never have been able to live it down," Longley observed. "The issue is not whether women can talk; it's more that their neighbors would never stop talking about it." He added that Afghan women are making their own films in secret on their iPhones: "I'm in no position to make a film about Afghan women, and meanwhile, Afghan women filmmakers are in no position to make the kind of film we made in 'Mohabat.'"

Who made it, and how he sees his role

Alex Gibney, whom Longley calls "the best documentary producer alive," produces alongside Longley and Mohammad Sharif Hotak. Gibney signed on immediately after seeing "Angels Are Made of Light." Hotak, who lived down the road from the filming villages, supplied the local trust. "His familiarity with the place and the people was the key to making the movie," Longley said.

Longley is blunt about being an outsider. "I'm not attempting to become Afghan. I'm trying to help non-Afghans understand Afghanistan better. After fighting a war in their country for 20 years, this seems like the least we can do," he said. He arrived "with a camera in my hand instead of a gun" and was treated as a guest.

His politics are stated without apology. "I make films that reflect my own politics, which are pro-human and anti-war," he said, adding: "I suspect that my films are in direct conflict with almost everything you will see on television, but I can't say for sure – I've never owned a TV."

With the Rohingya anniversary approaching in 2027 and act one already in the can, Longley's next decade-shaped film may arrive right on time.