There have been times when award-winning journalist Puk Damsgård has known more about Danish photographer Daniel Rye’s ISIS kidnap ordeal in Syria than his own family. She was the first person to do an interview with him when he was freed in 2014 – which became her bestselling book The ISIS Hostage: One Man’s True Story of 13 Months in Captivity.
Damsgård knew therefore that when the case against some of Rye’s kidnappers – the British ISIS members nicknamed the Beatles by the hostages – began to move forward in 2022, it was time for her to get involved again in his story and its bigger repercussions.
“When we found out there was going to be a trial in the US, I started thinking, ‘How can we do something more than just news articles and news coverage?” she recalls.
She adds: “It’s also a privilege to be able to follow a story through. And this was not just any court case. This is a very important case. And it was also it was interesting for me to revisit the story with Daniel because he talks about it in a much different way now than he did in 2014 and 2015. He has gained a lot more perspective. It’s a much different phase of his life now.”
At CPH:DOX, Damsgård and Soren Klovborg presented the world premiere of The Hostage Takers, their new feature documentary. The filmmakers have collaborated for more than a decade already, as Klovborg is a commissioner on the DR news programme Horizon, for which she (Damsgård) is Middle East correspondent. They had also co-directed the 2016 documentary The Secret Slaves of the Middle East.
The Hostage Takers benefits not only from Damsgård’s unique expertise on the Rye case. It also has access to an incendiary interview conducted by British journalist and filmmaker Sean Langan with two of the so-called Beatles: Alexanda Kotey and El Shafee Elsheikh.
Damsgård and Klovberg had the idea to use Langan’s footage as a part of their film. They had used the footage initially in a more straightforward 3×30’ DR television project that aired in early 2022 (and accompanied by a podcast series). But Klovberg knew the material could also lend itself to a more artistic and in-depth feature-length version. As he says, “it’s a different creative process of taking investigative stories and making them character driven. That’s an interesting process.”
Langan clearly had his own agenda in doing his interview – which is one reason it’s unlike anything usually seen in traditional documentary work. Damsgård explains how, “there’s a huge level of manipulation in the interview, he’s there to collect evidence. He comes with everything that he brings.” He had been held hostage himself by the Taliban in Afghanistan for 12 weeks, and he was friends with the murdered UH hostage James Foley. “It’s a personal approach to talking to them. They both have something at stake.”
Klovberg continues, “It’s not a usual way to do an interview, it’s not journalistic, but it has something else to it, the atmosphere is so tense in that room and that was really interesting. As an interviewer, he makes just about every mistake in the handbook but still he somehow succeeds in getting something to happen in that room that’s hard to explain.”
Damsgård and Klovberg say it’s important to show these Isis soldiers on screen. “It’s interesting for people to see who they are, to unmask them, and see them as humans confronted with their actions, so it’s important to meet them,” says Damsgård. “It’s not my role to demonise them. I think often in the Western media we lack the ability to look at what is perceived as our enemy.”
Klovberg adds: “It would have been a problem if they were just getting a free ride without any political questions.”
They edited the film in less than eight weeks, with editor Theis Schdmidt. While Damsgard was at home in Beirut or covering the war in Ukraine, she was checking in frequently with her own notes to the team back in Copenhagen: “It actually helped for me to be away, and I was so comfortable knowing Soren was sitting in the editing room with Theis and just running with it.”
After its launch at CPH:DOX, The Hostage Takers will air on DR on March 26. DR International Sales is handling sales on the film.
Damsgård continues her journalism work in the Middle East, but sees a feature film like this as a chance approach a story in a more profound way. She says, “A project like this lets us dig just a bit deeper.”
