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GUESTS: Michael Tucker, Petra Epperline, co-producers and co-directors of “The Prisoner: Or How I Planned to Kill Tony Blair

In September 2003, Iraqi photojournalist Yunis Khatayer Abbas, was arrested along with his three brothers, in his home in Baghdad. For the US soldiers who conducted the raid, it was all in a day’s work. For Yunis, it was the beginning of an ordeal that changed his life. Eventually Yunis was informed that he and his brothers were arrested for planning the assassination of British Prime Minister, Tony Blair. Thinking it was a joke, Yunis assumed he would be released soon. But it was nine months later, and a stint at Abu Ghraib prison before he was released. Directors and Producers, Michael Tucker and Petra Epperline, makers of the acclaimed documentary, Gunner Palace, have made a new documentary about Yunis’ experience. It’s called “The Prisoner: Or How I Planned to Kill Tony Blair.” According to Newsweek, this “extraordinary documentary” gives you “a fine, nuanced and ultimately very disturbing sense of the durable and deeply ingrained anger among the Iraqis.” I spoke yesterday with Michael Tucker and Petra Epperline about their film, starting with Michael describing how they stumbled onto the story.

Visit the film’s official website here: www.theprisoner.us.

The Prisoner opens this Friday at the Laemmle Sunset, 8000 Sunset Blvd in West Hollywood.