Standard Operating Procedure
A critically-acclaimed documentary from Oscar®-winning director Errol Morris (The Fog of War), Standard Operating Procedure examines the incidents of abuse and torture of suspected terrorists at the hands of U.S. forces at Abu Ghraib prison, available to buy and rent on DVD and Blu-ray from 12th January 2009, courtesy of Sony Pictures Home Entertainment.
A powerful and profoundly moving documentary, it presents an uncompromising view of the situation in Iraq and uses recreations and real photos to reveal the truth behind the pictures taken by US soldiers of the tortured and humiliated prisoners at Abu Ghraib.
Is it possible for a photograph to change the world? Photographs taken by soldiers in Abu Ghraib prison changed the war in Iraq and changed America's image of itself.
Yet, a central mystery remains. Did the notorious Abu Ghraib photographs constitute evidence of systematic abuse by the American military, or were they documenting the aberrant behavior of a few "bad apples"?
The documentary sets out to examine the context of these photographs. Why were they taken? What was happening outside the frame? We talked directly to the soldiers who took the photographs and who were in the photographs. Who are these people? What were they thinking?
Over two years of investigation, we amassed a million and a half words of interview transcript, thousands of pages of unredacted reports, and hundreds of photographs. The story of Abu Ghraib is still shrouded in moral ambiguity, but it is clear what happened there.
Standard Operating Procedure is released 12th January.