Where did you get the idea for Drone and why did you want to make the film?
Tonje Hesen Schei: I got the idea for the film in 2010 while working on my previous film Play Again. I came across the story of a gamer that had dropped out of high school and joined the US military. Very quickly he became a drone pilot because of the skills he had acquired in gaming. In my last film I look at the consequences of children in the States growing up behind screens and I was very concerned by the thin balance between getting points for shots in the virtual world, to killing real people on the other side of the world. I started looking at the very close relationship between the entertainment industry and the military.
You show the two sides of the drone warfare-the victims’ perspective in Pakistan and drone controllers’ perspective in the US-and have used an impressive number of interviewees. How difficult was it to get access to them?
THS: It was very important for us to tell strong stories about what we see as the front line on the war on terror. We wanted to show people living under the drones in Pakistan as well as drone pilots pushing the buttons in the US. It took a long of time and hundreds of phone calls to the Pentagon and to gatekeepers of the US Air Force.
We interviewed 2-3 drone pilots but focused on the testimony of the former drone pilot and now opponent Brendan Bryant who had given an interview to Der Spiegel in 2011. There was something about his story that moved me and that made me want to work with him. For the last decade he has been the only voice from inside the drone programme and his testimony has been essential to understand what has been –and is-going on in the US.
The recruitment of young video gamers is chilling. Have you investigated as well what kind of drone recruiting happens in Europe?
THS: In the States the military have used video games as a recruiting tool for a long time and they even have a recruiting game called America’s Army. They have busses that drive around high schools, where boys can enter to play video games. What we found out and that concerns us is that the drone phenomenon is spreading across Europe, in countries like Germany, Sweden and Norway where there are strong military platforms and gaming conventions. In Sweden and Norway, we don’t have armed drones, but we feel that this is just beginning so we’re looking at this issue at home as well.
Is the feature documentary going to be shown in the US?
THS: We travel to the States tomorrow (Wednesday March 4) and have a premiere on Thursday at the True/False Film Festival in Columbia, Missouri. That’s a very important platform because they choose very few films but push them to the US public. We also have several interesting offers from US cable stations.
What do you say to people who might argue that the use of drones is justified in the war against terrorists such as IS, who themselves use technology and images to draw attention on their atrocities?
THS: For me it’s very important to ask the question: are drone attacks really effective? In the film, one of our military experts and drone opponents asks ‘How can we win this war when every time we kill four, we create 10 [terrorists]? Right now drone war is seen as an effective surgical weapon. But if you look at figures, just in Pakistan, over 3,000 people have been killed because of drone attacks and only 1 to 2% of those were dangerous extremists. In the long term, this drone war is making us less safe at home and extending the concept of war without responsibility, accountability or boundaries which is very dangerous in today’s world.