Biography
Jehane Noujaim
2006 TED Prize winner Jehane Noujaim is the gutsy filmmaker responsible for Control Room, an astonishing documentary about Al Jazeera's coverage of the Iraq war and the contrasting notions of truth expressed in the US media. Two weeks before the US invaded Iraq in 2003, Jehane Noujaim gained access to both Al Jazeera and the US military's Central Command offices in Qatar. By being in the right place at that very wrong time, she caught the onset and outbreak of the Iraq war on film. The resulting documentary, Control Room, exposed the very divergent ways the Arabs and the West covered the war. Being raised between Egypt and the US, the exploration of culture is one of Jehane's driving forces. Her reason for making the film: "It's important for everyone, simply as individuals, to try to understand different people and different cultures, but it's especially important for people in the United States because we affect so much of the world beyond our borders."
