On March 4, journalist and filmmaker Mona El-Naggar discussed her career in documentary filmmaking — from covering conflicts in the Middle East to the role she sees for herself as a storyteller in the media landscape. The event was co-sponsored by the Middle East Initiative — a collaboration between the Dickey Center for International Understanding, the Middle Eastern studies program and Jewish studies program — along with Dartmouth Dialogues, while Middle Eastern studies professor Jonathon Smolin served as moderator.
Approximately 60 people attended the discussion in Haldeman Hall 41, while an additional 46 watched on a livestream, according to Naomi Wade, a program coordinator at The Dickey Center. In addition to a moderated discussion and audience Q&A, the event featured a screening of Al-Naggar’s 10-minute New York Times documentary, “Three Friends, One Jihadi.” The 2015 short explores the decision of a young Egyptian man, Islam Yaken — who hails from the same Cairo neighborhood as El-Naggar — to join ISIS.
El-Naggar focused on several of her film projects — each guided by her belief in being “a human over a journalist” — during the moderated discussion. “Three Friends, One Jihadi,” for example, unravels the personal unrest that led Yaken to join ISIS, including his discomfort with his own sexual desire.
“We have an understanding of what radicalizes people — how these groups [like ISIS] prey on the young and the political and social factors that are at play,” El-Naggar said. “But I wanted a more intimate understanding of the factors in a person’s life that could potentially drive someone to go to that extreme.”
Drawing from her work on “Three Friends, One Jihadi,” El-Naggar explained her approach to journalism as rooted in a “curiosity” to investigate the questions she does not understand.
In an interview with The Dartmouth before the event, El-Naggar added that her work follows a tested approach of “finding one person who then speaks about the broader issue.” In “Three Friends, One Jihadi,” El-Naggar weaves together Yaken’s own digital footprint, including a “workout video for Jihadis,” alongside interviews with his friends.
“Young people make choices, and radical choices, all the time,” El-Naggar said in an interview. “I wanted to approach [Yaken] not from a place of judgment, but from a place of curiosity.”
El-Naggar utilizes a similar method — immersing herself in a single story connected to a greater conflict — in her 2017 New York Times documentary, “She Wants Independence. In Egypt, That Can Be Dangerous.” In the film, El-Naggar follows Esraa, an Egyptian teenager, as she leaves her parents’ home to move in with friends. Esraa ultimately fails to reconcile her family’s traditional ideals with her desire for agency — in one scene, her brother admits to beating her, wondering why she does not feel an “obligation” to wear a veil.
During the conversation, Smolin noted that El-Naggar depicts her subjects with “texture.” He cited an interview from “She Wants Independence” in which Esraa’s mother anxiously asks, “If I die tomorrow, will I have to pay for Esraa’s sins?” as an example of El-Naggar’s complex storytelling.
“A theme in [El-Naggar’s] work is that [she] looks at people that the media would normally villainize, or present as a one-dimensional character … with a basic curiosity,” Smolin said during the event.
El-Naggar also highlighted a series of more recent profiles on individuals affected by the Israel-Hamas war. In one video, El-Naggar interviews 11-year-old Dareen al-Bayaa, who had lost dozens of family members in one airstrike in Gaza.
“It was one of the hardest interviews,” El-Naggar said in an interview. “[al-Bayaa] started breaking down, and asking, ‘Why? Why did this happen to me? Why, why? Why?’ These are the questions you can never answer — but it’s precisely the questions that we need to be asking.”
The series also includes a profile on Palestinian poet Mosab Abu Toha, as well as Motaz Azaiza, a Palestinian photographer. Through this video series, El-Naggar said she hopes to put a “face and voice to the numbers.”
“War is tangible loss. It’s destruction,” El-Naggar said. “And it’s not theoretical — it is very personal and very specific. As journalists, our basic role is to bear witness.”
Evan McMahon ’25, who attended the talk on Tuesday, said he resonated with El-Naggar’s sentiment that “we have a moral obligation to pay attention.”
“[Her comment] made me think about the rhetoric from people our age that they just can’t watch the news,” McMahon said. “But it’s our duty to be somewhat informed. We can’t just turn our head to [the news] because it’s ugly.”
During the conversation, El-Naggar also discussed her recent decision to step down from her position as a Middle East Correspondent for The New York Times — a role she had held for 18 years. El-Naggar now serves as a fellow at the American Academy in Berlin. Ultimately, El-Naggar explained that she was craving “uncertainty.”
“What brought me to journalism in the first place was this desire to always be in a state of learning and discovery and searching, and to not be so obsessed with outcome,” El-Naggar said. “[In resigning], I was searching for the sense of possibility.”
El-Naggar is currently working on her first feature-length documentary, which follows two young Palestinian journalists in exile who gained millions of followers online through their coverage of the Israel-Hamas war. During the event, she described the film as exploring the journalists’ “parallel journeys as they wrestle with loss, isolation and the search for the meaning of home.”
“The truth is not that complex. It’s quite simple,” El-Naggar said. “At the heart of every story are the people who are impacted.”
