Video Of ‘Hero’ Syrian Boy Saving Girl From Gunfire Is A Fake, A Big Fat Fakey-Fake Of The Fakiest Variety

Last week I posted a video here of a young Syrian boy saving a young girl from a barrage of sniper fire. In it the boy rushes into the gunfire, plays possum and pretends to be shot, then picks her up and drags her out of harm’s way. But I forgot the one true web constant: Nothing is real on the Internet.

I often forget this, because I choose to believe that some things are, but I’m repeatedly reminded that nothing is real. Not this kid, definitely not this kid. As the BBC is reporting, it was all faked by Lars Klevberg, a 34-year-old Norwegian director, and it’s basically the plot of the 1997 movie Wag The Dog.

From the BBC News:

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.”

“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.”

“It was not a cynical way to get attention. They had honest motivations,” Ase Meyer, short film commissioner for the NFI told BBC Trending. “I was surprised people thought it was real. When I see the film, the little boy is shot but he keeps on running. There is no blood on the child.” The NFI awarded 280,000 kroner (£26,480) towards its production. “It was a really low budget film,” says Ms Meyer. “People normally apply for more money.”

However, when Ms Meyer heard that the film was online she contacted the filmmakers to encourage them to reveal it was fiction. When asked if the NFI had a responsibility to tell people the film wasn’t real, Ms Meyer said “It was the responsibility of the filmmakers”.

So once the film was made, how did it go viral? “It was posted to our YouTube account a few weeks ago but the algorithm told us it was not going to trend,” Klevberg said. “So we deleted that and re-posted it.” The filmmakers say they added the word “hero” to the new headline and tried to send it out to people on Twitter to start a conversation. It was then picked up by Shaam Network, a channel that features material from the Middle East, which posted it on YouTube. Then it began to attract international attention.

The major rule of thumb I forgot about working on the Internet: if it looks too good to be true, it isn’t.

It was nice to believe there was a hero child out there willing to put himself in to harm’s way to save the life of another, but we were all duped. Well, I was duped and then I shared it with you all, and for that I apologize.