Interview with Anna Broinowski

Out of the often overwhelming mass of documentary genre clones and failed attempts at objectivity, there rises one, recent, unique offering. From director Anna Broinowski, Forbidden Lie$ explores the controversy surrounding Norma Khouri, the international best-selling author of an autobiographical novel about Jordanian honour killings, who was later exposed as a fraud and a con-artist. Rather than simply forcing one perspective or opinion upon her audiences, Broinowski plays with the notion of truth, spin and fact, encouraging viewers to question the film they are watching as much as they question Khouri herself.

“I think that people who say that documentary filmmaking is the most truthful form of filmmaking are not correct,” Broinowski asserts, “I think that the minute you point your camera at someone, whether it’s a drama or a doco, you are shaping reality… Every decision is personal, and it’s all about your opinion of the subject. I was keen to explore that in the film, and Norma’s tendency to deceive people became the perfect springboard for me to mirror stylistically what she does to people’s minds.” Drawing more inspiration from con movies like Catch Me If You Can and Ocean’s 11 than from the well worn conventions of documentary filmmaking, Forbidden Lie$ is peppered with CGI, fast paced cinematography, snappy cutaways and dramatic re-enactments.

The dramatic impact of the film is certainly enhanced by the fact that all Broinowski’s interview subjects presented such animated testimonies that they feel almost staged. “None of them were scripted, and I too was gob smacked,” she remembers, “I just couldn’t believe my luck when this high-up lawyer in Chicago said to me, point blank, to the camera, having just met me, ‘She is evil and diabolical.’ I think it wasn’t so much good fortune, but the fact that Norma polarises people around her, so you can’t have a mediocre response to her. So it was delightful, because everyone was passionate about her, whether for or against. And I was like a kid in a toy store, because I had this cast like something from a thriller, and the only difference was that they were real.”

Like many of the people she interviewed, including sophisticated minds in media, publishing and law, Broinowski was also not immune to the charm of this sweet talking woman. She describes herself as initially being a “Norma convert,” and remembers how her initial vision for the film was one that would redeem Khouri, and prove the media’s negative spin on her to be entirely incorrect. “Norma is so likeable you really want to believe that she’s no where near as cunning or as diabolical as these crimes that she’s done would make her out to be,” Broinowski stresses, “She’s really audacious, she’s feisty, and she has a strong spirit. In many ways she’s a post-feminist icon… and you can’t help but admire that. And how do you marry that up with the fact that she tricked an old woman out of her life savings and her home?”

Naturally, this vision had to shift, as promised evidence and interview subjects disappeared, and Khouri’s story became more and more tangled. Broinwoski insists though, that this film shouldn’t be about judging Khouri, so much as about judging the system in which we live, that allows people like her to thrive. “The film’s message is ‘trust no one, believe no one, question everything, corroborate everything’,” she concludes. “I think that we have lost contact with the importance of truth. As a society, we have become so cynical that we know longer care about the fact that we’re being spun to by the media and by politicians. We need to fight again, to make truth and facts and investigation important once more.”