BBC Four: Why did you want to make the film in the first place?
Esteban Uyarra: The first influence was a book called Comanche Territory by a Spanish reporter called Arturo Perez Reverte, who is now a very famous novelist. It's about his experiences as a war reporter in Kosovo. There is a lot of stuff in the book about the hotels that journalists stayed in and I thought I could make something like Fort Apache - you're safe inside the hotel, but outside there's a hostile environment. Then I read A Mad World by John Simpson, which also talks about similar hotels.

My plan was to go anywhere in the world where there was this sort of hotel and make a film. Afghanistan was impossible because I couldn't afford to get there. I considered Palestine but that seemed too routine. Then, as the build up to war in Iraq started hotting up I thought it might be the opportunity I was waiting for, I just decided to go to Kuwait City. There was no understanding of how things were going to work for the journalists. We just hung around the American press office and were given cards that said "unilateral journalists". But we quickly felt like bystanders who could be easily brushed off.

BBC Four: As PJ O'Rourke says in the film, you were "seen as pests"...
EU: Absolutely. At that point I wasn't that desperate because I thought I would just go to Iraq with others, on a bus trip, and come back. You felt that the press officers were withholding information just before the war. It quickly became apparent that there were two levels of journalist covering the war - the embedded journalists - the majority of whom were British and American - and everybody else who was independent. Most people don't realise that there were far more independent journalists in Iraq than embedded ones.

BBC Four: Did you get the impression while you were there that this was a war that the media was covering very differently from previous conflicts?
EU: Absolutely. The embedded journalist idea is a great trick. I think it works like a CCTV camera - it supposedly records the facts but you can't understand anything - you can't talk to the people, you just see someone. The embedded journalists were like having 800 CCTV cameras trying to understand the whole picture but not being able to understand anything. The trick worked because it seemed that the access was amazing, but it was worse than in many other wars. You could see the bullets flying, you could hear reporters in tanks - but there's nothing you could learn from that. They were literally in bed with the army. People I spoke to afterwards claimed they knew that if something bad had happened or a marine had done something immoral then they wouldn't have reported it. They knew by then that these were same people they were having breakfast with each morning in a tent. The emphasis was on keeping the morale high. How many dead people did you see on television with all these embedded journalists? Very few.

BBC Four: Were there many restrictions on what you could and couldn't film?

EU: The militarised area of Northern Kuwait was completely out of bounds. Even if you got out your camera they would immediately send you back home. The same is true of the border crossings - that's why you never see us actually cross the border in the film. That was such a huge risk - it would have meant the end of the film.

The US marines in action

You knew the marines had their guns pointed at you. Apart from that I was amazed at what I was able to film. The bit at the end when the marines are looking for the Iraqi sniper and are so brutal, I was surprised how much I was allowed to film there and set things up, from close-ups to wide shots. They never asked me, "What the hell are you doing?" My only answer as to why that was, is that they were proud of what they were doing - hunting down this guy. The marines were very happy to be filmed.

BBC Four: How was that trip into Iraq?
EU: The trip was a bit of a nightmare because you have three checkpoints in Kuwait. We passed through the first one without any problems. At the second one, one of the people I was with, supposedly one of the most experienced reporters in the world, behaved like a child. First he tried to cross the border and was stopped by the marines. Then he showed them his United Nations card from Kosovo. The marine said, "Have you taken a wrong turn? We're not in Kosovo." Then the marine started scratching the photo and it wasn't even him. I just thought "I am either dead or going to be sent back to Spain". The marine told us never to come back to that checkpoint.

We then did what most people do: we went back and travelled through all the dunes - got off the roads completely and navigated through the landmines. We were eventually stopped by the Kuwaiti military who gave us some tea and kept telling us to go back. By this stage we were right next to the border and could see Iraq. Finally, one guy said, "If you want to go to Iraq, that's the place to go" and pointed to a spot two miles away on the map. So we went there and saw all the tanks moving in and just got in between the tanks. About five metres before the border a marine started shouting and knocking on the car so we just accelerated and that was that. Once you're in Iraq there's nothing they can do.

BBC Four: How weird is that - to go into a country as part of an army convoy?

EU: I know. By then everything was weird but that was the weirdest thing. Plus, the change from Kuwait to Iraq is huge. Kuwait City is very hazy, very sunny, very hot, but is still clean to some extent and the roads are okay. Iraq is arid and broken down - you immediately know you are in a place with character and history.

Behind the barbed wire

There are kids coming from all over with stones - the number one sport for them was Kill the Journalist. I didn't have time to think. We so nearly turned back which would have ruined the whole film. I was very excited to cross the border. I remember this guy calling his friends and hearing that they thought Basra was going to fall to the British. The night we walked in, there were tanks, helicopters, everybody taking the town.

BBC Four: This was the first time you've filmed in a war zone. Do you want to go back?
EU: The first time I was asked that I said no. I'd just finished editing and once you start watching the same thing over and over you feel slightly more guilty about going to a place to film rather than to help. So my answer was no, but not out of fear. I wasn't afraid when I was there - I was too focussed on doing the job. It was a sense of disgust, not of the journalists, but of the whole idea of war. What you have to go through mentally and how stupid you feel that there is nothing you can do. But saying that, I've just come from Haiti which was been really dangerous, with people shooting every where and machetes flying around and that felt more chaotic than Iraq.

In Iraq you still felt that you knew where the bombs may come from. You can't say that of a random machete. I also enjoyed being in Haiti so I might be getting addicted to all this adrenaline. I don't feel like I want to do it all the time - it's like the once in a while cigarette - I'm a social smoker when it comes to war zones! I don't think I'll be chasing channels to send me to conflicts but if they ask me I know I will do it. I don't have the imagination to create things out of nothing. If you give me an empty room, an actor and a tripod then I am lost. But if you give me people running from bombs I can dance with the camera and almost choreograph shots in my mind - I see people moving almost before they move.

 WAR FEELS LIKE WAR HOMEPAGE