Documentary Reveals Constant Surveillance of Arab Americans

In her award-winning documentary, “The Feeling of Being Watched,” young filmmaker and journalist Assia Boundaoui records her own sleuthing efforts to uncover the FBI’s surveillance of her neighborhood. The film begins in her family home with a memory of two men on a telephone pole outside her bedroom window at 3 o’clock in the morning. Her feisty hijab wearing mom assures her that it is probably just the FBI and tells her to go back to sleep. As far back as 1997, she remembers the fathers of two of her friends being investigated for terrorism and found subsequently guilty instead of white-collar crimes; mail fraud and lobbying without a license. Still after these two men served their sentences, the constant surveillance caused the families to separate as the fathers migrated to other countries. Now as an adult, Assia, with her mother’s full support, turns to the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) to uncover the extent of surveillance on her tightknit Muslim community of Bridgeview, Illinois and to address the constant unsafe feeling “like someone is invading your life.”  

 

In both a personal and political quest, Assia uncovers surveillance on their mosque even further back to the 1990s. She depicts the mosque as a social support center, where congregants assist one another, as when her father passed from cancer and the mosque raised enough money to pay off their home. At other times, young girls giggle and take selfies and adults gather and relax. In contrast, FBI agent Robin Wright begins his surveillance operation “Vulgar Betrayal” and although he is later taken off the case after accusations of religious discrimination and sexual harassment, Wright makes a menacing reappearance. In her personal quest, Assia questions her own self censorship and her desire to be accepted outside of her community as the line between paranoia and the FBI reality becomes blurry. Her narrative places the discrimination against the Arab American community in the historical context of damaging surveillance of the American Indian Movement, the Civil Rights Movement and the Internment of Japanese Americans. 

 

The story follows Assia as she collects door to door signatures to release the FBI reports despite the lingering fear of some of her neighbors.  The entire neighborhood remembers being ‘visited,’ the euphemism for a FBI questioning. As Assia gets closer to uncovering the FBI reports, the suspense builds and she becomes more and more frightened. In one bizarre scene, the police rush into the neighborhood with heavy equipment including a tank and a helicopter when they claim there has been a bank robbery. They later refute the bank robbery but offer no counter explanation for this display of military power. Assia responds by organizing a joint community and FBI meeting where she stresses the importance of trust. The FBI agents assure her that they do not behave in this fashion and urge her to report any transgressions. Subsequently she calls a community meeting to inform her neighbors of their rights and how they can push back; as one young woman asserts “no more chai for the FBI.” Despite her fear and the creepy reappearance of Agent Robin Wright, Assia decides to go to court for the release of the papers on her community. While the judge sides with Assia and she publicly celebrates the successful FOIA request and our democracy, she has yet to receive the single files on any one person. While a viewer might begin watching “The Feeling of Being Watched” with skepticism, Assia’s very American grassroots efforts for justice and her earnest and humble camera will open eyes to the personal and public costs of misplaced distrust and racism.