Movie on Westgate terrorist attack to premiere on Monday

A policeman carries a baby to safety after masked gunmen stormed the Westgate mall in Nairobi as other shoppers take cover from the terrorists gunfire. FILE PHOTO | SIMON MAINA |

What you need to know:

  • Produced through footage acquired from security cameras inside and outside the mall, the film shows the events that transpired without editorialising.
  • The film, which premiers a week before the September 21 anniversary of the attack, will air throughout the seven days period in the US and UK at intervals.

A new movie about last year’s terror attack on the Westgate shopping mall is set to premier tomorrow on cable TV channel HBO to commemorate the first anniversary of the raid that left 67 people dead and more than 200 injured.

Four Al-Shabaab gunmen raided the upmarket mall shooting shoppers and forcing others to hide as best they could.

Following in the footsteps of similar films, Terror in Moscow and Terror in Mumbai, directed by British Emmy Award nominee Dan Reed, Terror at the Mall is billed as an investigative documentary that captures events as they unfolded at the mall in the Westlands neighbourhood of Nairobi.

SECURITY CAMERAS

Produced through footage acquired from security cameras inside and outside the mall, the film shows the events that transpired without editorialising.

HBO, the producers who have already released a trailer for the 90-minute film, have indicated that it will feature graphic, never-before-seen footage and photographs of the siege unfolding as well as first-hand harrowing accounts of those who experienced the attack as it happened.

The trailer features an interview with Amber Prior, a mother who had been shopping with her two children.

She got pinned down behind a display case in the main area of the mall and was forced to hide there for many hours as firefights repeatedly broke out around her.

The gunmen walked by her hiding place several times, and most of the shooting occurred right in that hall.

Another man recalls how he hid behind a counter, wounded by a gunshot, as he watched his wife slowly bleed to death next to him.

In another scene, a mother profiles her now dead 17-year- old son who had attended a cooking class at the mall.

All of these stories are supported by truly dramatic imagery that was taken in real time through footage from hundreds of surveillance cameras mounted in the building.

Speaking to CNN on the eve of the movie’s release, Reed, who is also the narrator in the film, said it would capture “real death and violence like never seen before”.

“You can see a million acts of simulated death in fake horror and action movies, but it doesn’t impact the viewer the same way that real inhumanity like this can,” he said.

“This movie isn’t trying to titillate or fetishise this violence. But, on what is close to the anniversary of this horrific moment, it is good to remember what these acts of terror look like.”

Reed, who had to go through thousands of hours of footage captured by 100 security cameras from different angles at the mall, said that the three-day siege was the most videoed attack in human history, and it is bound to change how people perceive terrorism.

“Terror at the Mall isn’t a picnic to watch. Yet in terms of enhancing understanding of the threat and the challenge presented by those who wantonly kill and expect to die, the images might zero in on the nature of the problem,” he said.

“The power of security camera footage is that it does make any viewer of this film feel like something is actually unfolding in front of you,” he said.

DECLARING VICTORY

Without appearing to castigate the Kenya government’s response, the film shows the irony of both government forces and the Al-Shabaab declaring victory when a lot of people who could have been saved had died.

“As an outsider, I can’t tell the Kenyan Government that you guys messed up, but at the same time, people bled to death because of lack of urgency,” said Reed.

Also captured in the film for the first time is a standoff between members of the police Recce squad and the Kenyan military which led to three police officers being shot — one fatally — in friendly fire.

It also shows the four terrorists making calls to people to whom it appeared appeared they were giving status updates and asking what to do.

“What was striking at the end of the film is that both sides, the Kenyan Government and Al-Shaabab, were bragging about how well they did and clearly the only result was that it was tragic,” said Reed.

The film, which premiers a week before the September 21 anniversary of the attack, will air throughout the seven days period in the US and UK at intervals and to a worldwide audience on September 26 through CNN.

It is the first film made about the Westgate siege which Al-Shabaab, through their leader Mohamed Godane, who ordered the attack, said was a retaliation for Kenya sending its forces to Somalia in October 2011.

Godane was killed in a US air strike in Somalia on September 6.