EXCLUSIVE: There has been a continuing sense of malaise and alertness from the stars and filmmakers behind Mosul, the Iraqi-language thriller based on the true story of an Iraqi SWAT police squad that took to the streets to exterminate ISIS members to avenge loved ones that unit members lost at the hands of the terrorist organization. The film made a Thanksgiving debut on Netflix and became one of the most viewed films on the site in Europe and the Middle East. Unfortunately, with the film’s popularity, several of the film’s stars have found their social media pages filled with unsettling threats of violence intended to come from members and supporters of the fragmented ISIS organization.
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“When I posted on my social media that the film was going to be released, on the first day there was a lot of ISIS,” said Suhail Dabbach, who plays the staunch colonel Jasem, leader of the SWAT team. “They posted a lot of videos and bad words. Like, they said, now we know you, and you have to take care of yourself. Every day, touch your head to make sure it’s still on. They said, ‘We know where you live and we will reach you.’ “
Dabbach’s family received similar frightening threats, and his co-star Adam Besa, who plays the police officer who is summoned to the SWAT team, saw his Instagram page erased and he was threatened on WhatsApp. These threats have been traced back to Turkey. The film’s funders, AGBO, Netflix and 101 Studios, took this seriously enough to direct internal security forces to intervene and ensure that everyone is safe.
“It was certainly an unnerving experience for the actors,” Joe Russo told Deadline. “It is never a comfortable feeling to have your privacy violated, and it is scary to receive death threats from anonymous sources. We feel that this has been handled with skill by Netflix and our own security team. “
Anthony Russo declined to say whether they verified that the death threats actually came from ISIS after AGBO regained the TigerSwan security service used to ensure that the actors and crew were safe during production in Morocco.
“I’ll just say that we take this very seriously,” Russo told Deadline. “We knew that the film was provocative and potentially dangerous for everyone involved. We took the highest security measures we could imagine and were familiar with that process after working on Marvel films. This was a whole new level in terms of secrecy. We didn’t distribute scripts, we had a code name for the film and we removed all ISIS references from the scripts when we had to distribute them, so they were never mentioned explicitly like in the film. We had the best security guards working with us, but there was still danger, but we had to be in a country in the Middle East to make the film like we did. We were exposed and we had to act in the most responsible way possible, but everyone felt it was worth taking the risk.
Matthew Michael Carnahan, who wrote and directed the drama for AGBO, said the threats are a terrible by-product of the film’s extremely high audience, a particularly notable audience number because it was shot in Iraqi language with subtitles to maintain a sense of authenticity. It has been difficult for Dabbach, whose performance as a SWAT leader has been widely acclaimed. He waited long for his big acting moment; he graduated from Baghdad College Fine Arts with the intention of being an actor, but had to flee when Saddam Hussein came in and installed his son Uday as an art supervisor. This turned cinema into a dangerous profession. Dabbach spent time in Jordanian refugee camps before heading to the United States, where he sought jobs, but made a living working mainly in an asylum. While he was in a memorable scene with Jeremy Renner in the Best Picture winner The Hurt Locker – it was the man trapped in an explosive vest who begs the bomb specialist to disarm the mechanism and save his life, to no avail – Mosul it is a true demonstration of his acting skills, and it is a shame that he has to worry about threats while waiting for the next main role.
For Carnahan, this is just the last of a winding and sometimes dangerous road for the film. He would like to see his actors getting roles out of the film, not death threats. Fortunately, Netflix and AGBO were on high alert with security teams that just had to be reactivated to assess threat levels.
“It’s been like that since we started shooting under a false name,” Carnahan told Deadline. “It has always been called Picnic, because TigerSwan security guards said, you are in Morocco, ISIS’s third largest national contingent are Moroccans, we have to take all possible measures to ensure that we are safe. “
Carnahan said they hid the plot as much as possible while filming in the country, and most of them did not recognize the SWAT team’s flag that flew over an armored Humvee in battle scenes. “There was just a moment when things got dangerous on the set and it wasn’t even related to ISIS, it was more like gang warfare,” he said. “We were in a really bad part of Marrakesh, so from that point on, we were always aware of the threats. Now that the film has been released and is as successful as before. It was the second movie in the world when it came out, and I just sent something to me, which said it was the eighth most popular movie on Netflix in December. I don’t know if Netflix ever thought it would be this big; I was happy when 101 Studios [which acquired it after Toronto 2019 for a planned theatrical release dashed by the pandemic] was talking about putting us in 800 cinemas. This seemed too good to be true. The idea that these people are now threatening us, I think it comes with the territory. That Suhail’s family in the Middle East would be threatened, that they would break into his wife’s phone or that Adam’s Instagram page would disappear and he would receive these WhatsApp threats, no one knew he would reach that level. On the one hand, it was scary, on the other we thought, man, we must have hit close to home. We must have reached a critical point, in what remains of ISIS, or at least in that ISIS mentality. “
“It would be great if the world noticed these guys – and Suhail was working in a retirement community when the cast, which he is now on the radar of some very bad people,” said Carnahan. “I want him to be recognized for the risk he took, I want Adam to be recognized for the risk he took, and I want people to think about this film and see him knowing that there are very dangerous people out there who hate that they are watching. Who hate that someone portrayed this struggle, with a narrative over which they have no control.
“I think that 48 hours after we left Iraq, ISIS publishes this 44-minute response to the film, but uses a pirated Netflix logo that appears above it. I want people to know what these guys did, how crazy this movie was from the beginning, when they’re watching it, yes, it’s a movie, but it carried physical risks for everyone involved, especially for the actors. It is proof of how good they are. “
Netflix put its security in place and AGBO resumed TigerSwan, its security company that provided security on set and technical consultants, most of them former Delta soldiers, Green Berets and the Foreign Legion.
“They went through all of this with Suhail and Adam and helped them clean the pages and protect themselves,” said Carnahan. “We did the best we could do in front of that, but there are people out there who are murdering people with knives, because they insulted Islam. It would be silly not to be nervous and a little scared. “
Marrakesh’s scare was about money, not political ideology, said Carnahan.
“We were in a really difficult part of Marrakesh, in those scenes with the narrow alleys where there are caves, but these are apartments,” he said. “To shoot in that really difficult part of Marrakesh, you have to hire security, which means that the local dominant gang so that people are not harassed and hurt at the top and bottom, people don’t scream during their shooting because that it is also a tactic to get money. Firearms laws are so strict in Morocco that if you are caught with a spent shell, you go to jail. So, these guys fight with knives. Did a handful have the smiles of Glasgow, where the cut starts at the corner of the mouth and goes up to the ear? That’s how they fight. They’re all on Parkinson’s medication because that’s where that Parkinson’s-specific medication is made in Morocco. We are filming there, everything is going well and then the rival gang learns that the other is being paid. Right after school is over, they pick up a bunch of kids from their part of the neighborhood and run to the set. The Marrakesh police showed up, they have riot shields. It was dangerous for 15-20 minutes. John Sweeney, who ran the TigerSwan team, always said, if I ever feel like I’m grabbing you, go ahead. I am not going to do this unless it really means something, that we are in a difficult situation. That was the only time he grabbed me. We have always had a safe green room. We waited there for 10 minutes and everything worked. The people who needed to be paid were paid and the people who needed to be threatened were threatened. We were able to continue shooting. “
None of these gang members had an alliance with ISIS, it turned out. “They were the kind of gang you would see in the United States, or in Michael Jackson’s ‘Beat It’ video, fighting with knives,” he said. “It helped a lot that there were no American squads or uniforms, nothing to identify with American soldiers. This kept us under the radar and we carefully covered the Humvees at night. “
Dabbach told Deadline that he was looking forward to his next role. The Russians put several of the actors in some of their other AGBO films, including the sequel to Netflix’s success Extraction, and the hope is that the film will catch their attention in the awards season, where it is eligible for the Golden Globe as the Iraq team. It did not qualify as Iraq’s selection for the Oscar for Best International Feature Film, but it is eligible in all other categories.
“I don’t want them to see the terms of a foreign image or a Hollywood image,” said Carnahan. “They were American filmmakers making a film in a different language, with different faces, about people and an eminently human story. The idea that we would be considered a foreign film, well, I understand, but I’m not lobbying for that. I want people to judge the film on its merits and whatever happens. “
What Carnahan really wants is for the brave actors in the film to use Mosul serve as a calling card for future functions, and perhaps not just as terrorist drivers or bandits.
“Nothing would make me happier than seeing these guys work again and not in any war movie,” said Carnahan. “Just playing the role of lawyers, something completely different from that world. Especially Suhail, because that guy has talent and dreams postponed for decades, because of the country where he was born. This madman comes to power and has to flee, and this career he was starting to build is on hold and for the next few decades, he is working in a retirement community, after living in a refugee camp in Jordan. I would love it if they were able to translate the popularity of this into ongoing career opportunities. They are all in the same place, waiting for what comes next. “