Welcome to POV .
I'm Pete Schwaba, host of
Wisconsin Public Television's Director's Cut .
Tonight, we bring you Assia Boundaoui's
"The Feeling of Being Watched."
Imagine living your life everyday with the sense that
there are people listening to the goings on in your home.
Now imagine it's to the point where you tell your kids
not to use common phrases like "that's the bomb"
for fear the authorities would document it or even worse,
burst through your door and interrogate you.
Then one day you find out it's all true
and that not only you and your family
but your entire community was being watched for over a decade.
Assia Boundaoui explores why the neighborhood
she grew up in outside Chicago
was the subject of one of the largest
counterterrorism operations ever conducted pre 9/11.
In "The Feeling of Being Watched,"
Boundaoui is as much an advocate for her community
as she is a director.
She struggles to disrupt the government secrecy
and stares down the FBI
and uncovers this covert investigation,
eventually landing the case in federal court.
Tonight the characters in Assia Boundaoui's film
will be watched, in a good way,
and their story will be told thanks to this activist
and director's first feature length documentary.
"The Feeling of Being Watched" starts now on
Wisconsin Public Television, your home for independent film.