Nick Broomfield, previously known for documentaries that expose as much about the film-maker as they do about his subjects, will next release his second feature film, Battle For Haditha, an account of the massacre in that town (the background to which you can read about here). The film promises, given the confused and ever-bleeding international context of the Iraq war, to be even more inflammatory and divisive than his first feature film, Ghosts, which dramatised the lives and deaths of 23 Chinese cockle-pickers who drowned, quite unnecessarily, in Morecambe Bay in 2004.
The question is whether Broomfield - a man who has previously done brilliant work (The Leader, His Driver and The Driver's Wife) and utter, conspiratorial garbage (Kurt & Courtney) - is truly qualified to demand answers of something that must surely rate as the 21st century's My Lai. I leave it for you to decide. But this clip of the forthcoming film at least suggests that in Broomfield's view, the American troops who committed the massacre were also its victims. I spoke to an American serviceman yesterday and he expressed what most of us feel: "Frankly, the whole thing leaves me feeling very sick and confused."
