Synopsis
Live from Baghdad (2002) is an HBO TV movie you can watch online on iFILM. Directed by Mick Jackson, it follows CNN producer Robert Wiener and his team as they stay in the Iraqi capital after every other network pulls out — because the bombing is about to start and they want to broadcast it live.
Michael Keaton plays Wiener as a man running on deadline adrenaline and bad coffee, negotiating press access with Iraqi officials while his home network second-guesses him from Atlanta. Helena Bonham Carter is Ingrid Formanek, his producer. David Suchet plays the Iraqi information officer who becomes their unlikely point of contact. The film is less a war movie than a portrait of how news gets made — the bargaining, the logistics, the moral question of whether to stay.
The screenplay draws from Wiener's memoir of the same name. January 1991, the first night of airstrikes: CNN was the only network with a live feed from Baghdad, and that broadcast changed how the world understood televised war. The film took home Emmy Awards, including for Outstanding Television Movie. Watch Live from Baghdad online on iFILM.
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