NEW YORK(SMI-WIRE,04.13-04.24.16)The Film "The Fixer" made it's World Premiere debut at the Tribeca Film Festival 2016 with a red carpet arrivals and special screening afterwards in NYC.

The film "The Fixer" is about a person is hired by foreign journalists to facilitate the gathering of news stories, Especially in the context of war. Leaving behind his life as a fixer for Western journalists reporting on the war in Afghanistan, Osman (Dominic Rains) lands in a small bohemian town in Northern California....a, living on the couch of his friend’s mother (Melissa Leo) and working as a crime reporter for the local newspaper.Restless and eager to penetrate the mysteries of his new home, he strikes out on his own, befriendingthe unstable hot tub craftsman Lindsay (James Franco) and an elusive local actress Sandra (RachelBrosnahan). But when Lindsay goes missing under troubling circumstances and Osman goes after him,he is drawn deep into the backwoods of this small town. As things take a dangerous turn and an unfamiliar form of violence burbles up around him, Osman is forced to confront the increasingly untenable reality of his new life. 

IAN OLDS : THE FIXER DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT:

The germ for this film emerged from tragedy while I was making a documentary in Afghanistan. I had

become fascinated with the dynamic between western journalists and their local guides – known as

‘fixers’ – while filming Occupation: Dreamland in Iraq. I travelled to Afghanistan to follow this interest,

planning to make a new documentary aboutthe mechanics of war reporting by focusing on the crucial

relationship between an American journalist and his Afghan fixer – a man named Ajmal Naqshbandi.

I learned the heartbreaking news that Ajmal had been kidnapped and murdered while I was back in the

US raising money to return to Afghanistan to finish production. I was badly shaken but felt a deep

obligation to return to Afghanistan in an attempt to grapple with Ajmal’s death and honor a man who

had become both our colleague and our friend.

In the process of finishing that film for HBO (Fixer: The Taking of Ajmal Naqshbandi) I became involved

in the asylum process for another Afghan fixer. Unlike Ajmal, this friend made it safely out of

Afghanistan to asylum in the West where he was facing a very different kind of struggle. After jumping

through all the bureaucratic hoops and finally being officially welcomed to his new home, he found

himself facing a quieter, existential crisis. He was a man seeking purpose in exile.

Thinking about that moment became the genesis for this film. I couldn’t shake the feeling that there was

still much to tell about this hidden class of Afghan journalists and I knew I needed to grapple with the

story in a different form. I mean this both in terms of the shift from documentary back to fiction as well

as a shift away from the pervasive instinct to see all Afghan stories through the lens of war trauma.

The trauma of war is real, but after thinking about my own experience and talking with several Afghan

friends, I kept coming back to one idea. To repeatedly tell the stories of Afghans through the lens of war

and its trauma is too reductive; it cheapens humanity and denies the fullness of living. “I hate being

pitied.” This was a refrain I heard over and over again from my Afghan friends. Where is the humor?

Where is the sexuality? Where is the conflicted inner life? Where is the subtle pain of daily living? For in

truth, these are all alive and well, even in the midst of unending war.

This understanding became the basis for our approach to the film.

The story is about a young Afghan fixer named Osman, but we set the film in a small bohemian town in

Northern California and intentionally built the drama of the piece around a local event as opposed to a

past trauma. We wanted to create an unexpectedly vibrant, dramatically compelling film that treated our

main character as a full, conflicted human being and d not simply as a symbolic victim of history.

The goal was not to deny the dark reality of trauma. Instead we wanted to grapple with it as but one aspect of

complex man’s search for meaning outside of war.