This is a developing story.
The 40-minute documentary The White Helmets won the Oscar for Documentary Short on February 26, but two of the film’s subjects — one of whom also served as one of its three cinematographers — weren’t at the ceremony in Los Angeles.
On Saturday, the Associated Press reported that the United States had refused entry to Syrian cinematographer Khaled Khatib, who was scheduled to arrive in Los Angeles on a Turkish Airlines flight from Istanbul the day before the awards. Khatib — who is himself a member of the Syrian Civil Defense, the group profiled in the film — was said to have been denied entry to the US after officials from the Department of Homeland Security said they had discovered “derogatory information” about him.
Before leaving Istanbul, Khatib was detained by Turkish authorities, who said the US would now also require a passport waiver to allow him to enter the country. A Department of Homeland Security spokesperson told the AP that “a valid travel document is required for travel to the United States,” declining to provide further information.
Then, in a statement that Khatib posted to his Twitter account on Sunday, the Syrian Civil Defense said that its leader, Raed Saleh, needed to remain in the country instead of attending the Oscars because the “intense air strikes across the country mean he must focus on work inside Syria.”
Khatib and Saleh had been previously issued visas to attend the ceremony.
The statement went on to say that Khatib had planned to attend, but “was not able to travel to the Oscars due to his passport being cancelled by the Syrian regime, despite having been issued a US visa specifically to attend the awards ceremony.”
Later on Sunday, Khatib spoke with NBC News by phone, and said that Turkish officials had told him it was his visa that was canceled when he arrived at the airport on Tuesday. “Khatib said he wanted to attend the ceremony, but circumstances did not allow it, calling his experience ‘naseeb’— an Arabic expression meaning ‘fate,’” according to NBC’s story.
According to the Guardian, the Syrian government under President Bashar al-Assad of Syria has accused the Syria Civil Defense of being a front for al-Qaeda and “of faking footage of the aftermath of airstrikes for propaganda purposes.” The group has denied this charge.
The White Helmets (which is streaming on Netflix) takes its title from the colloquial name of the Syria Civil Defense, a group of ordinary Syrian men — former builders, tailors, and artisans — who work heroically and tirelessly to extract victims from beneath the rubble in places like Aleppo. The group was nominated for a Nobel Prize in 2016, and has saved more than 58,000 people since 2013.
In a February 17 statement, Khatib had said, “It is so important that people see the film. It is important that people understand that Syria has people who want the same things they want: peace, jobs, family and to live without the fear of bombs. If we win this award, it will show people across Syria that people around the world support them. It will give courage to every volunteer who wakes up every morning to run towards bombs."
The volatile political situation around the globe has left its mark on the Oscars ceremony. In January, the celebrated Iranian director Asghar Farhadi, whose film The Salesman is nominated for Best Foreign Picture, announced that he would not attend the ceremony — even if he were afforded a visa to do so — in protest of the US’s immigration ban. The film’s star, Taraneh Alidoosti, stated that she would boycott as well.
And in a nearly unprecedented move, the five directors whose films are nominated for Best Foreign Picture penned a joint letter released on Friday, February 24, expressing “unanimous and emphatic disapproval of the climate of fanaticism and nationalism we see today in the U.S. and in so many other countries.” The signees are Farhadi, Maren Ade of Germany, Martin Zandervliet of Denmark, Hannes Holm of Sweden, and Martin Butler and Bentley Dean of Australia.
“Human rights are not something you have to apply for,” the directors wrote. “They simply exist — for everybody. For this reason, we dedicate this award to all the people, artists, journalists and activists who are working to foster unity and understanding, and who uphold freedom of expression and human dignity — values whose protection is now more important than ever.”
Watch the trailer for The White Helmets: