The Situation

06 June 2005 –
The group receives news from Damian’s agency that he
will be shooting a new project in Morocco over the next four weeks.

17 June 2005 –
Damian Lewis confirms to fans that he will be filming in Morocco over the next few weeks.

16 June 2005 –
The Christian Science Monitor website has an on-set report
from the film The Situation which will star Damian Lewis and is
currently shooting in Morocco! The film, budgeted at 1 million, is being produced by
Michael Sternberg, directed by Philip Haas, and is based on a script by Wendell Steavenson. The article says this of the plot:

“I have no idea if Mr. Haas’s drama, called The Situation will bomb or triumph at the box office. The plot seeks to tease out the confusions and the disappointments of the Iraq war while exploring a love triangle between the fake Dan Murphy, an American journalist played by the Danish actress Connie Nielsen, and an Iraqi photographer played by German-Egyptian Mido Hamada.

In a plot that explores some of the same territory as Graham Greene’s The Quiet American, the fictional Murphy wades into the murky world of Iraq’s tribal politics. In doing so, his ideals clash with realities of war. “

More on-set vignettes can be found here at the Christian Science Monitor website.

In an interview posted at the website Suicide Girls, actress Connie Nielsen has this to say about the film:

“When I got the script for The Situation I felt it was a way to explore where humans are right now. What it means when the situation in the world is no longer on TV but part of our lives. The fact that we are at war is not something we should forget so I want to explore what it means for all of us. I prefer to make a human story more than anything else. People are dying over there and the numbers are mind boggling to me. We don’t know who they are or why exactly it happens. Like Brothers, The Situation doesn’t say whether or not we should be Iraq but what it is like now that we are there.”

19 July 2005 –
The Situation now has an IMDB page.

16 August 2005 –

IMDB has updated The Situation page to include cast members.

22 September 2005 – According to info on this page, The Situation filmed in Rabat, Morocco during the months of June and July 2005.

04 October 2005 –

While doing press for The Great Raid, Connie Nielson described The Situation to
UGO.com as “a movie about the war in Iraq. I play a female American journalist who’s over there trying to find this one story that she feels will somehow make sense of what’s going on over there and she’s finding it very hard to do so.”

To Blackfilm.com she said:

“The Situation is a drama about the situation in Iraq where I play
a journalist who is trying the story that will make it worth her
while having been several months and just wants to have to some
closure and wants to find one story that sort of explains what’s
going on because she says that there was a road side explosion, the
guy lost a hand and it’s lying in the dirt and this and this and
that and so and so many people die inside a story. It does not tell
us what’s going on over there. And she’s on a hunt for a story and
you get to see all the different sides of the American military, the
state department intelligent officials, the Iraqi politicians, the
Iraqi normal people; you get to see them all and you get
kaleidoscopic look at the situation in Iraq and it helped me so much
to deal with my feelings about watching the news and not getting
what in the hell is going on and all of a sudden after I read the
script, that feeling evaporated and I felt that now I had some human
understanding of who these people are and what’s going on and it’s a
relief, and I went and did the movie.”

09 October 2005 –
Actor Sean Gullette, best known for his role in Pi, will play the character of “Martinez” in The Situation.

17 October 2005 – More quotes from Connie Nielsen explaining
her decision to appear in the film:

from Aint It Cool:

“What’s with you getting caught up in these politically charged
films?

I don’t know that they’re political at all. On the contrary, I think
they’re interested in the human aspect. The problem with politics in
films is that it very rarely translates to good movies. But
something that talks about the human fallout from political
situations, that can make for really good movies…”

from Afganistan Daily News:

“Nielsen is heading this week to Morocco to star in The Situation,
directed by Philip Haas (Angels and Insects), about a female
reporter in Iraq — but quickly preempts any leading question about
her choice of films.’I’m not interested in making dogmatic political
statements. I’m an actor, I’m an artist, I’m not a politician. But I
am interested in the world around us, in finding out for myself what
does all this mean.’”

02 December 2005 – Damian’s assistant updated the group with news of various projects including The Situation and says it may play at the Berlin Film Festival in February.

06 December 2005 –
In an About Film.com interview Connie Nielsen states that her new film The Situation will be released in the spring.

09 December 2005 –
According to the Loyola Marymount University site, director Philip Haas recently presented The Situation at the School of Film and Television in Los Angeles!

02 February 2006 –
In its interview with Connie Nielsen, thefutoncritic.com says that The Situation will be released soon.

23 February 2006 – Damian Lewis briefly discusses The Situation in an LA Times interview: The Situation illuminates the illusions of well-meaning and educated liberals who run into more complications than they expect in Iraq. The film, he said, asks audiences to consider certain aspects of the war in Iraq. “Is it futile, us trying to rebuild, democratize Iraq, when [‘The Situation’] shows you how difficult that process is? The arguments are, yes, it’s worth it, we should persevere, versus it isn’t worth it, we should get out. That’s apart from ‘Is it right or wrong.’ That’s a different argument entirely.”

06 March 2006 – Arianna Huffington mentions meeting Connie Nielsen at an Oscar after-party and says “She told me she’d just finished a movie about Iraq called The Situation, and the best part of all: she promised to blog about it when it comes out.”

19 March 2006 – Information on The Situation has been difficult to come by! Here’s a profile of one of the actors in the producuction, Dr. Mahmoud El Lozy.

24 March 2006 – IMDB has updated their The Situation page with more cast, crew, and producer info.

29 March 2006 –

Jeff Beal, who’s behind the musical score for The Situation responded to an enquiry about the film saying “no distributor yet as far as I know, but the film is EXCELLENT.”

14 April 2006 – The Situation will screen in Philadelphia on April 24th at Drexel University’s Rudman Institute!

17 April 2006 – This North West Vision.co.uk article says actor Shaun Evans is a rising Liverpool actor who appears in The Situation.

17 April 2006 – The Director of Photography for The Situation, Sean Bobbitt, also worked on the Damian Lewis films The Baker, Normal for Norfolk (Damian Lewis has a producer credit on this one), and Jeffrey Archer: The Truth.

15 May 2006 –
According to Damian’s assistant The Situation will screen at the Venice Film Festival.

24 May 2006 – A FoxNews.com article laments that The Situation (which will debut at the Venice Film Festival) was not selected for Cannes and calls it “more important” than some of the other films chosen.

25 May 2006 – The French article here shows a photo of Connie Nielsen filming The Situation. The article says the film deals with the “murder of of two young Iraqis that Connie Nielsen’s journalist character is sent to investigate.”

27 July 2006 – According to Damian’s assistant, The Situation has found distribution in the US for the spring.

30 July 2006 – The Situation is not listed on the Venice Film Festival program!

17 August 2006 –
According to this Variety article Philip Haas’s new movie The Situation starring Damian Lewis will be released in the US next year by Shadow Distribution, a small distributor that specializes in independent films and documentaries.

21 August 2006 – According to Shadow Distribution, The Situation will open the Hamptons Film
Festival (October 18-22) in October! They also plan to open the film in NYC in early January or February 2007!

28 August 2006 – From indieWire, “The Situation” to Open ’06 Hamptons Fest:

The world premiere of Philip Haas’ “The Situation” will open the 14th annual Hamptons International Film Festival (October 18 – 22), organizers announced today. Haas’ “Situation,” set for a U.S. release early next year by Shadow Distribution, is described as a thriller, romance and war movie set in contemporary Iraq. It stars Connie Nielsen and Damian Lewis, and written by Wendell Steavenson. …

Hailed by festival organizers as the first U.S. narrative feature to deal with the war in Iraq, the film explores the story of an American journalist (Nielsen) who gains access to the people of Iraq via a young Iraqi photographer. But, when U.S. soldiers throw a local boy off a bridge in Samara, a cycle of violence erupts between insurgents and Iraqi police. In a conversation with indieWIRE, Hamptons festival Artistic Director Rajendra Roy noted that the film would set the stage for a festival that will explore the theme of women and children in a conflict zone within a number of festival films, particularly in the annual Conflict & Resolution competition.”

Tickets go on sale September 29.

31 August 2006 – From FilmFestivals.com, “Iraq at center of Hamptons opening with The Situation”:

Combining elements of thriller, romance and war movie, THE SITUATION, the first U.S. feature film dealing with the war, set exclusively in Iraq, is a dramatization of one of the countless human stories that lie behind the headlines of present-day Iraq. When some American soldiers throw an Iraqi boy off a bridge in Samarra, it sets off a chain of events that exposes the deep rifts among the Iraqis in Samarra and results in yet another cycle of violence between the insurgents and the corrupt Iraqi police.

Anna (Connie Nielsen) is an American journalist who decides to write a story about the assassination of an Iraqi leader whom she admires. At the same time, she is pulling away from a relationship with Dan (Damian Lewis), an American intelligence official who thinks the war can be won with hearts and minds, and towards Zaid, a young Iraqi photographer, who shows her there are people, rather than sides, in the conflict. As she tries to make sense of the half truths of Iraq, she gets caught up in the violence and finds her life in danger.

21 Septembe 2006 – According to an article on Hamtons Online, Connie Nielsen will attend the film’s October 18 world premiere.

29 September 2006 – The Situation will screen at the Hamptons International Film Festival on October 18 (twice), 19, 20. Click here for the film’s page, schedule, and more detailed film description.

05 October 2006 – According to his assistant, Damian Lewis will probably attend The Situation‘s world premiere on the 18th at the Hamptons International Film Festival.

14 October 2006 – The distributor Beyond International lists The Situation in its catalogue possibly indicating that there are plans to distribute the film in Australia or elsewhere internationally.

31 October 2006 – The Shadow Distribution website offers a download of The Situation press kit (PDF file). No

stills are available yet.

1 November 2006 – The Shadow Distribution website has added a page for The Situation.

2 November 2006 – According to Shadow Distribution, The Situation will open in NYC on February 2 “with the rest of the country to follow thereafter”!

8 November 2006 – According to Shadow Distribution, The Situation will

play in Chicago in late February or early March.

2 December 2006 – Director Philip Haas will teach courses in Documentary Film and Screenwriting for Princeton University’s
Visual Arts Program this spring. The Situation will be

presented.

14 December 2007 – Several Updates:
» The movie’s official site at www.thesituationmovie.com is expected to go live next Monday.
» New images here and here
» View the trailer here or here.
» The Situation will open in New York City on February 2nd at the Lincoln Plaza and Angelika Cinemas. Theatrical releases in other US

cities have been scheduled for February and March including Washington DC, Chicago, Philadelphia, Los Angeles and others.

19 December 2007 – Chicago’s Music Box Theatre now lists The Situation in

their Winter Calendar (PDF file, see page 4.) The film will open there on March 2nd for a

two-week run.

20 December 2007 – The Situation starring Damian Lewis will screen at the Palm Springs International Film Festival which runs from January 4th through the 15th.

25 December 2007 – New poster here; A
list of preliminary playdates posted on the film’s official site.

28 December 2007 – The Situation starring Damian Lewis will screen at the Palm Springs International Film Festival on January 5th and 7th.

9 January 2007 – Director Philip Haas will present The Situation to the New York chapter of the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences (NY NATAS) on January 19th. Non-members may attend.

18 January 2007 – IFILM has two new clips here and here.

23 January 2007 – Several updates:

» The region 1 (North American) DVD will be released by New Video/Docurama.

» Beyond International holds the international distribution rights.
» Connie Nielsen is scheduled to appear on the US CBS channel on January 29th as a guest on The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson to promote the film.

25 January 2007 – The California Film Institute will host an advance screening of The Situation on February 18th in San Rafael, CA. Sean Penn will host the event that will include a Question and Answer session with director Philip Haas and Damian’s co-star Connie Nielsen.

Connie Nielsen will make a guest appearance on the Tavis Smiley Show on January 30th to promote The Situation.

27 January 2007 – The Situation will be screened on Feb 13th at the Berlin International Film Festival as part of the European Film Market. Bankside Films is now the international distibutor.