Taxi to the Dark Side
It is not the only film to catalogue and criticise the activities in de facto US military prisons in the so-called “war on terror”, but Taxi to the Dark Side is the only one to have won an Academy Award®. In his acceptance speech, filmmaker Alex Gibney dedicated the award also to his father, a naval interrogator, who encouraged him to make this the subject of his film.
Taxi analyses the US Government’s inherently hypocritical policies responsible for the establishment of prisons such as Guantanamo, and the atrocities committed therein, by focusing on the story of Dilawar, a 23 year-old Afghani taxi driver who died within days of being transported to Bagram.
His death resulted from injuries sustained from a range of torture including beatings, bashings, and deprivations of light and sleep, among other things.
Only a matter of weeks beforehand, Dilawar’s parents had given him a second-hand Toyota, to use as a taxi. He was subsequently arrested, along with a number of customers he was transporting. Dilawar was dead within a week. His customers were released over a year later, having been deemed not to pose a threat.
Unlike Errol Morris’s overly busy documentary on the same topic (Standard Operating Procedure), Taxi is well-focused and shuns melodrama in favour of concision. The subject matter is, after all, adequately dramatic.
What both documentaries have in common, is their criticism of America’s political policies that led to the establishment of torture prisons, and the subsequent death of innocent people.
Originally broadcast in Australia in an abridged format as part of SBS’s “Why Democracy” series (around 70-80 mins), the DVD release contains the documentary in its feature length (over 100mins).
Australian Producer Eva Orner, received an Oscar® for this outstanding documentary.