The Film

The Story

What links the security of your smartphone, the disappearance of an innocent citizen for a tweet, and the sudden rise of Manchester City Football Club? This film explores the United Arab Emirates as a gleaming laboratory of high-tech progress and global investment, shadowed by authoritarian control. Through the story of Ahmed Mansoor—engineer, poet, and human rights advocate—this film reveals how visions of digital futures coexist with surveillance, info wars, and silenced dissent. Tracing flows of capital, disinformation campaigns and the disempowerment of citizens, the film exposes how Mansoor’s persecution – and the hacking of his iPhone – signals a broader threat to privacy, freedom, and citizens everywhere.

Ahmed Mansoor
Kate Feld
Dr. Aisha Bin Bishr
Artur Ligeska
Nick McGeehan
Marc Owen Jones
Lasse Skou Andersen
Peggy Manning
April Allerdice

Participants

    • Ahmed Mansoor, tele engineer, human rights defender
      "Freedom of expression is the core value of existence. Without it, you could lose everything else."
    • April Allerdice, University friend
      "We're all connected to each other, and in a way what happens to Ahmed impacts what happens to all of us."
    • Aisha Bint Butti Bin Bishr, Director General, Smart Dubai 2015-2020
      "In Dubai, our goal is to make our city the happiest city. Tech provide the solution and only solutions can bring happiness for the people."
    • Artur Ligeska, former detainee at Al Sadr national security prison (UAE), Author A Sheikh's Love and Prison Diary
      "They asked me to take off all clothes, they gave me one blanket and they told me “Welcome to hell”."
    • Nick McGeehan, Gulf researcher, co-founder-director of FairSquare
      "It’s much easier to understand Abu Dhabi if you conceptualise it not just as a city state, but as a corporation."
    • Marc Owen Jones, Associate Professor Northwestern University in Qatar
      "Social media companies and authoritarian regimes have some of the same goals - they are both in the business of data of wanting to know as much as possible about people"
    • Lasse Skou Andersen, Investigative journalist, Daagblad Information
      "Here in Europe, we have the European Union with its Charter of Fundamental Rights, with the right to privacy, democracy, and rule of law. If we think these values are so important then is it really ok to sell equipment to dictators, so they can deny their own people those same rights?"
  • Manchester, UK
    • Ben Clay, former Labour Councillor Manchester City
      "So the people who build big boxes of luxury flats, they are investing in the same way that Shell or BP would invest in an oil rig.  They invest so they can extract wealth."
    • Peggy Manning, Manchester resident
      "Of course, the [UAE] money has helped the city massively and regenerated lots of areas, but the partnerships are so interlinked through the fabric of our city now, that lots of areas are almost branded."
    • Kate Feld, Writer, Lecturer of Journalism, University of Salford
      "Our city’s being sold out from under our feet and its streets  are filling with the bodies of people  who have no place! Do you see them? Performance 'Etihad'"
    • Jonathan Silver, Professor of Urban Geography and Deputy Director of the Urban Institute
      "If they have not built any affordable or social housing in this development, what are they doing with that money? The problem comes back to the culture of secrecy, that we see not only around development in Manchester but in particular in the deal with the Abu Dhabi United Group."
    • Adam Leaver, University of Sheffield, Chair in Accounting and Society
      "How do we, the public, hold our Council to account, if we can't see the full economic picture of an important deal like this?"
    • Oscar Jenz, former Amnesty International country co-ordinator for the UAE
      "Ahmed Mansoor was literally the last human rights activist in the country."
    • Jackie D., Ancoats resident
      "There isn’t a pub, there is nowhere for the community to meet; you can't have a discussion about what's going on, because there is nowhere to meet."
    • Loz Kaye, Manchester resident
      "One of the accusations against Ahmed was that he was damaging the UAE's reputation. It is that reputation as a city that we have been asked to whitewash."
    • Susan Ferguson, Manchester resident
      "I think it's outrageous that in a radical city like Manchester, we're not saying anything. We've got so much money from the UAE here in Manchester it's just a no-brainer to get involved."
    • Henrike Greaves, Manchester resident
      "We need to speak out louder being able to speak freely and recognising that people on purpose shut up in this city. What are you scared of?"
    • Anonymous, Manchester resident
      "The issue in Manchester with the press is that the newspapers can't publish anything that's negative about the UAE because Man City football club won't then give them access to interviews with Pep Guardiola and the footballers. So they control the media in that way."
  • Featuring the voices of
    • Andy Burnham, Mayor of Greater Manchester (Pod Save the UK) about the horrendous human rights record of Manchester City investment partners, ADUG
      "They are investing. They haven't just invested in commercial facilities, they've invested in colleges, housing. You just have to judge them on the record of investments in Manchester, and obviously they built a team that's brought City the Treble!"
    • Micheline Calmy-Rey, President of the Martin Ennals Foundation, former President of Switzerland 2011, at Award Ceremony 2015
      "We have an empty chair today. Despite our efforts we have been unable to convince his government to allow Ahmed Mansoor to travel."
    • David Evenden, Offensive intelligence analyst, formerly NSA and Project Raven (DarkNet Diaries podcast) about UAE National Security programme Project Raven
      "We start getting requests for targeting of (..) journalists and human rights activists. It just turned into something that we didn’t really quite, none of us really agreed with. We realised that the requests were all political."

Full Credits

Press