In the dim glow of the projector, the room falls silent. The credits of “Planet of the Arabs” fade into black, but no one moves. Then, from the shadow at the front, Joe — or rather, Jusuf the Janissary — steps into the light.
His accent is faint, smoothed by years abroad, but his words cut with the sharpness of memory.
“Some of you know me as Joe,” he begins. “But my real name is Jusuf. Jusuf the Janissary. My homeland doesn’t exist anymore — not like it did. It was torn apart by the same empire that sells us these movies.”
He pauses, scanning the faces before him.
“When Croatia and Bosnia allied with America, and Serbia with Russia, the world called it geopolitics. But to us — to me — it was genocide televised for Western ratings. Every side thought God was on their team, and every bomb dropped was wrapped in propaganda.”
He gestures toward the blank screen. “You think these movies are harmless? No. They are the prelude to war. The script before the slaughter. Every stereotype, every scene of the brown man as the villain — it prepares the audience to accept the next invasion.”
He takes a slow breath, recalling the smoke over his childhood village. “I watched my homeland burn while CNN played heroic music over American airstrikes. They called it liberation. I call it cinematic brainwashing.”
Jusuf picks up the remote and rewinds his viral video to the beginning. The first frame of Planet of the Arabs flickers again — but now, through his eyes, it’s more than a mashup. It’s a requiem.
“This,” he says quietly, “is my revenge. Not through bullets or blood, but through truth. The camera they used to erase us — I turned it back on them.”
He turns to the audience — students, filmmakers, and wanderers who once believed Hollywood was harmless.
“Remember,” he says, his tone rising, “before every war comes a movie.”
And with that, Jusuf the Janissary walks out of the room, the glow of the projector still illuminating the ghosts of a thousand frames behind him.