Ellick Recounts Documentary Experience

OPC member Adam Ellick recounts his experience with Malala Yousafzai, a 14-year-old Pakistani schoolgirl who was shot in the head by the Taliban in retaliation for her work in promoting girls’ education and children’s rights in the northwestern Swat Valley, near the Afghan border.


 

I had the privilege of following Malala Yousafzai, on and off, for six months in 2009, documenting some of the most critical days of her life for a two-part documentary. We filmed her final school day before the Taliban closed down her school in Pakistan’s Swat Valley; the summer when war displaced and separated her family; the day she pleaded with President Obama’s special representative to Afghanistan and Pakistan, Richard Holbrooke, to intervene; and the uncertain afternoon she returned to discover the fate of her home, school and her two pet chickens.

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