XAVIER MUNTZ

FRANCE  | 2016 | 52’

An exclusive and chilling investigation into the origins of the Islamic terrorist group and its bloody rise, fuelled by army abuses. On April 14th 2014 over 250 schoolgirls were kidnapped by Boko Haram in Chibok, in northern Nigeria. This outrageous act heralded the birth in international media of an Islamic sect which had been in existence for over ten years in the region. Soon after this, its leader, Abubakar Shekau, proclaimed his allegiance to the black flag of the Islamic State. Xavier Muntz has undertaken an investigation in the war torn region where the group came into being in 2002, to try to uncover the reasons behind its extreme violence.

Xavier Muntz, independent filmmaker, is an investigative journalist. 40 years old, he studied at the Institut d’Etudes Politiques in Paris, the Cardiff School of Journalism and the Ecole Superieure de Journalisme in Paris. In 2014 he choose to document the Kurdish resistance against the Islamic State. After entering illegally in Syria, he went to the besieged city of Kobane on the 4th of october 2014, crossing ISIS ligns on a motorbike; on the 11th of december 2014, a supply helicopter dropped him on mount Sinjar which was at the time surrounded by ISIS: he narrates it in "Surrounded by ISIS", winner of Lo Porto Prize at Terra di Tutti Film Festival 2015.