No, the Belgrade Forest isn’t in Serbia. It’s the massive woodland area outside Istanbul where Saudi Arabian journalist Jamal Khashoggi’s remains may have been buried. In a case which caused revulsion and outrage across the world, Khashoggi was assassinated in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul in October 2018. It is widely believed that powerful and ruthless Saudi Crown Prince, Mohammed bin Salman, ordered the killing and that it was carried out by Saudi agents.
The crime has been investigated in numerous articles, books and films including Bryan Fogel’s The Dissident and Rick Rowley’s Kingdom Of Silence. However, Jan Ijäs’ Belgrade Forest Incident…and What Happened to Mr. K?, an international premiere in Visions du Réel, comes at the subject from an oblique and original angle.
Rather than tell his story in a journalistic way, Finnish director and media artist Ijäs filmed his work in the Istanbul locations where the main incidents occurred: the hotels where the Saudi agents stayed, the streets outside the consulate and, of course, the forest itself, where the filmmakers went on a dark, wet day – one reason why the location looks so sinister.
“We followed the same footsteps these murderers were taking in Istanbul,” the director says of the itinerary.
The filmmakers weren’t allowed into the Ambassador’s house but visited a tandoori restaurant instead where they decided to shoot [macabre] shots of burning meat being cut up. (The filmmakers told the restaurant owners that they were making a documentary about Turkish cuisine).
At the time of the killing, Ijäs had been in Ankara working on another project. He had read about Khashoggi’s disappearance and was struck by the way the story kept on changing in terms of its news coverage. He and his cinematographer Ville Piippo decided to head to Istanbul. They had no sooner arrived in the city than the first accounts appeared suggesting that Khashoggi’s body may have been buried in the Belgrade Forest area. This was where they finally filmed before returning to Finland.
The Khashoggi scandal continued growing. “The news was becoming more and more crazy every day. Every day, they had a different story of what happened,” the director recalls of the ongoing media frenzy. Half a dozen or more different theories were advanced as to how the Saudi journalist may have been murdered. Almost as many different theories were proposed as to how the killers disposed of his corpse. “I decided very early that I am not doing the film in a timeline of what has happened in real life. It’s more interesting to follow the timeline of what news has been told to us, because that is the more crazy story.”
Ijäs recruited British but Finland-based voice artist Rebecca Clamp, with whom he has worked several times before, to provide the narration. She speaks in calming, utterly neutral tones as she describes the horrific events surrounding the disappearance. As Ijäs notes approvingly, her voice is also used in Finnair safety videos. “That’s how I first met her…You can put her Finnair voice to all kinds of crazy stories.”
This wasn’t an easy film to shoot. “The political situation in Turkey is quite difficult today and getting more difficult all the time. You have to be really careful,” the director remembers of his time in Istanbul. He had recruited a Turkish “fixer” to smooth the way. Even so, “every time you take the camera out of the camera pack, there is a police [officer] in less than five minutes asking what you are doing, why you are shooting and what you are shooting.”
Partly in order throw the authorities off the scent, the filmmakers were using a hand cranked, “half broken” Bolex camera from the 60s – a piece of equipment so rickety and ancient that “it really doesn’t look like you are doing any serious film at all…it really doesn’t look like you are doing something political.” Nonetheless, they were still frequently stopped and questioned.
The Bolex wasn’t just to hoodwink the cops. Ijäs likes the texture and look of old fashioned film. He tries to avoid digital technology where he can, he says.
“To me, it was clear from a very early point that I am not doing a film about the murder. I am doing a film about the news [reports] of the murder,” the director emphasises again of his intentions behind Belgrade Forest Incident.
Next stop for the film is IndieLisboa. Meanwhile, Ijäs’ is continuing with a series of films he has undertaken on the many different kinds of modern human waste. Generally, his work is screened in galleries rather than cinemas but some have popped up on the festival circuit or on TV. “I am really happy with this situation I have got myself in,” he says of the way he is able to move seamlessly between the art and film worlds.
