BENGHAZI // Even before the film’s release, Hollywood director Michael Bay’s new action movie is stirring controversy among government officials and residents of Benghazi, Libya’s second-largest city and the birthplace of the uprising against longtime dictator Muammar Qaddafi .
The film, 13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi, depicts the events of the September 2012 attack on the US consulate that killed four Americans, including ambassador Christopher Stevens. It is set to be released in January 2016.
Based only on the trailer, which has recently made rounds on Libya's social media, Benghazi locals and officials slammed Transformers director Bay for his unreleased film, calling it an "insult" to the north African nation.
“The people of Benghazi always wanted to be part of the international community,” the foreign ministry spokesman for Libya’s internationally-recognised government Salah Belnaba said.
But Bay’s new action flick, he said, sends a message that they are “fanatical and ignorant”.
The film follows a group of ex-military security contractors trying to save American lives in a dusty and hostile Benghazi.
The trailer shows the contractors entering the city of Benghazi and quickly turns to shots of explosions, gun-wielding militants, and the Americans suiting up for battle.
“We will not allow the American media to destroy our reputation,” Benghazi resident Mohamed Kawiri said in a Facebook post shared by hundreds calling for a boycott of the “cheap” movie.
“It was the Benghazi locals who fought the militias [that stormed the consulate],” said Mr Kawiri, who says he was among the people that carried Stevens out of the flames that consumed the diplomatic compound and helped the US security guards escape that night.
The film portrays the contractors, “who actually failed to secure the ambassador ... as heroes,” Libya’s culture and information minister, Omar Gawaari, said.
Bay, Mr Gawaari said, “turned America’s failure to protect its own citizens in a fragile state into a typical action movie all about American heroism”.
Qaddafi was ousted from power as part of the 2011 wave of Arab Spring rebellions and killed by an angry mob on October 20, 2011. Four years later, the country is consumed by chaos.
Libya is now split between an internationally-recognised government, which was forced to relocate from Tripoli to eastern Libya, and a rival government and parliament in Tripoli set up by the religiously-conservative militias that control the capital.
In Benghazi, Libyan army forces have been battling armed factions led by extremist commanders for months.
One Libyan blogger sees the film as more about American politics than Libya.
“It seems that this entire movie boils down to the spoiled bickering of Americans as they grapple for power, using the murder of a good man to gain political leverage over one another. Not unlike Libyan politicians, then,” said the anonymous writer of the Libyan blog Journal of a Revolution.
“Between all this, a beautiful city, my city, is reduced to so much hyperbole in a debate that lost relevance long ago.”
The film has no political objective, Bay said during the Deauville Film Festival in France last month. “I’ve met with the CIA on this movie, and I show the whole situation,” he said.
However, Benghazi locals said the new film appears to misrepresent both their city and the events of that night.
Others are worried that the film will not show the Libyans who tried to intervene and help as the attacks were taking place.
Thousands of protesters took to the streets afterward to denounce Stevens’ killing.
* Associated Press
