“Do Not Be Daunted by the Magnitude of the Challenge in Front of You”: Assia Boundaoui on Her Surveillance Doc, The Feeling of Being Watched

An Algerian-American raised in Bridgeview, Illinois, just south of Chicago, journalist and filmmaker Assia Boundaoui grew up being watched. The FBI has been aggressively spying on her predominantly Arab-American community at least as far back as the ’90s, despite the fact that the law enforcement organization uncovered very little lawbreaking in the process.

And now Boundaoui has turned the tables — or rather the lens — on the Federal Bureau with her debut feature, The Feeling of Being Watched (an alumnus of Spotlight on Documentaries at IFP Week). The film’s a nonfiction journey that takes Boundaoui from dogged FOIA requests to a survey of our long history of racial and religious profiling — ultimately ending in, what she terms, a strategy for “citizen under-sight.”

Filmmaker caught up with the festival-hopping director during the film’s international premiere at Hot Docs (right on the heels of its Tribeca world premiere).

To read my interview visit Filmmaker magazine.