The Oath

The Oath

2010. USA. Directed by Laura Poitras. The second in a series of documentaries dealing with the Iraq War, its aftermath, and the War on Terror, Laura Poitras’s astonishing and essential The Oath, which was featured in Filmmaker’s Spring 2010 issue, is a character-based mystery about a Yemeni cab driver—a former Al Quaeda member who was once one of Osama bin Laden’s bodyguards—and his brother-in-law, a low-level driver who chauffeured bin Laden. But at the film’s start, only one of them is in Guantanamo, while the other promotes jihad on the streets of Yemen. The reasons for their different paths is the puzzle Poitras solves, in the process revealing trenchant truths behind U.S. foreign policy. 90 min.