Control Room (2004)
Noujaim Films

Description

Control room is a rate film that is both timely and timeless: timeless because it ecplores the ancient and complex relationship between the western and Arab worlds timely because it reveals how satellite television has changed the way wars are reported- from news providers driven by the patriotism of their audiences to army information officers driven by military objectives. Control room is a seminal documentary that explores how truth is gathered presented and ultimately created by those who deliver it.

Tags

Iraq, Journalism

Collected reviews and ratings

10 Austin Chronicle | Marjorie Baumgarten

. The most important thing Control Room teaches us is that truth is not a very durable export, and that what is news in one part of the world is "more of the same" in another part. Perception is key, and Control Room should be required viewing for anyone within reach of a TV signal.
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10 Film Threat | Rick Kisonak

In the course of the film, an American viewer is likely to make a number of extremely surprising discoveries. Among them, that these are some of the most articulate, philosophical, well educated and simply likable people you're ever likely to run across in a TV newsroom.
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9.0 Amazon user reviews

Startling and powerful, Control Room is a documentary about the Arab television network Al-Jazeera's coverage of the U.S.-led Iraqi war, and conflicts that arose in managed perceptions of truth between that news media outlet and the American military.
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9.0 New York Times | A. O. Scott

Whatever your opinions about the war, the conduct of the journalists who covered it and the role of Al Jazeera in that coverage, you are likely to emerge from "Control Room" touched, exhilarated and a little off-balance, with your certainties scrambled and your assumptions shaken.
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9.0 San Francisco Chronicle | Jonathan Curiel

"Control Room" is one of this year's most significant films. Like "The Fog of War," which won an Oscar in February, "Control Room" should appeal to a broad audience that wants to go beyond the rhetoric of war and understand how "facts" can really be a mirage of our own choosing.
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8.8 Combustible Celluloid | Jeffrey M. Anderson

Directed by Jehane Noujaim, this fascinating, explosive film carefully shows how both Al Jazeera and American news coverage use the exact same methods to spin their version of the war.
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8.3 The Onion A.V. Club | Nathan Rabin

Noujaim's remarkable and timely film accomplishes something Fox News and Al-Jazeera seem wholly incapable of: presenting the facts, then letting the audience make up its own mind about their meaning.
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8.3 Old School Reviews | John Nesbit

Al Jazeera is unfairly perceived in the U.S. as pro-Arab and anti-American, but this ethnocentric view is soundly disputed throughout Jehane Noujaim's Control Room.
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8.3 Entertainment Weekly | Lisa Schwarzbaum

America dismisses al-Jazeera's authority at great risk. And American news organizations further destabilize Arab-American relations through indifference to the Arab perspective. This, at any rate, is the challenging thesis of Control Room, Jehane Noujaim's anxiety-provoking documentary about how the light of truth shifts when filtered through a screen of nationalism, Arab or American.
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8.0 Salon.com | Andrew O'Hehir

In Noujaim's portrait, Al-Jazeera's correspondents seem genuinely divided between their commitment to Arab nationalism (albeit an idealistic, democratically minded version of it) and the so-called objectivity demanded by news reporting.
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8.0 PopMatters.com | Cynthia Fuchs

Control Room tracks how "control" of imagery and ideas is crafted and lost, by the U.S. military as much as by anyone who might try to oppose that awfully imposing, well-funded, and oddly unified view.
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8.0 filmcritic.com | Pete Croatto

Control Room, the outstanding new documentary about media coverage on the Iraq war, is required viewing not only for any journalist, but also for anyone who truly believes the news they watch or read.
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8.0 Empire | Danny Graydon

Given the huge role of the media in the Second Gulf War, and the use of propaganda on both sides, this is a fascinating look at a side of the story we don't usually see.
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7.5 Chicago Sun-Times | Roger Ebert

... an enlightening documentary about how the U.S. networks and the Arab satellite news channel Al Jazeera covered the early days of the war in Iraq.
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7.5 Reel | Tim Knight

While Noujaim never comes out and openly criticizes the American military's ongoing occupation of Iraq, Control Room cannily juxtaposes scenes of wartime devastation with clips of Donald Rumsfeld at his most bombastic (and disingenuous, given recent revelations).
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