UPDATE: HMMM BOTH VIDEOS “REMOVED BY USER”?
This seems legit and will fire up most viewers:
“SYRIA! SYRIAN HERO BOY rescue girl in shootout”
And yet it’s all FAKE:
The Syrian ‘hero boy’ video was faked by Norwegian film crew…:
CAREFUL WITH THESE VIDEOS NOW
A video that appeared to show a young Syrian boy running through sniper fire to rescue a young girl is a fake, it has emerged.
The boy was hailed a hero after the one-minute clip, thought to be filmed in Yabroud, a countryside town 50 miles from Damascus, was posted online earlier this week.
But a group of Norwegian filmmakers have today revealed that the footage was in fact shot on location in Malta using professional actors.
Millions of YouTube viewers have been captivated by the ‘Syrian hero boy’ who manages to rescue a little girl while under gunfire. Now a group of Norwegian filmmakers have told BBC Trending they are behind it. They say it was filmed on location in Malta this summer with the intention of being presented as real.
Lars Klevberg, a 34-year-old film director based in Oslo, wrote a script after watching news coverage of the conflict in Syria. He says he deliberately presented the film as reality in order to generate a discussion about children in conflict zones.
“If I could make a film and pretend it was real, people would share it and react with hope,” he said. “We shot it in Malta in May this year on a set that was used for other famous movies like Troy and Gladiator,” Klevberg said. “The little boy and girl are professional actors from Malta. The voices in the background are Syrian refugees living in Malta.”
Were they comfortable making a film that potentially deceived millions of people? “I was not uncomfortable,” Klevberg said. “By publishing a clip that could appear to be authentic we hoped to take advantage of a tool that’s often used in war; make a video that claims to be real. We wanted to see if the film would get attention and spur debate, first and foremost about children and war. We also wanted to see how the media would respond to such a video.”
In fact the film received funding from the Norwegian Film Institute (NFI) and the Audio and Visual Fund from Arts Council Norway in October 2013. The filmmakers say their application for funding made clear they wanted to upload the film to the internet without making it obvious it was real or fiction. They also claim that those who financed it were aware of, and supported, these intentions.
“The children surviving gunshots was supposed to send small clues that it was not real,” said producer John Einar Hagen. “We had long discussions with the film’s financiers about the ethics around making a film like this.”