Meet Sam Bacile, Director of the movie 'Innocence of Muslims'

Bacile, a California real estate developer who identifies himself as an Israeli Jew, said he believes the movie will help his native land by exposing Islam's flaws to the world.



"Islam is a cancer, period," he said repeatedly, his solemn voice thickly accented.

Bacile, however, says he never anticipated such a furious reaction.

‘Innocence of Muslims’
The two-hour movie, Innocence of Muslims, cost $5 million to make and was financed with the help of more than 100 Jewish donors, said Bacile, who wrote and directed it.

According to the Wall Street Journal, Bacile posted the original trailer for the film in early July on YouTube. In recent days, the film garnered more attention after activists allegedly criticized aspects of the film on Twitter.

Bacile's film was dubbed into Egyptian Arabic by someone he doesn't know, but he speaks enough Arabic to confirm that the translation is accurate. It was made in three months in the summer of 2011, with 59 actors and about 45 people behind the camera.

The full film has been shown once, to a mostly empty theatre in Hollywood earlier this year, said Bacile.

The film claims Muhammad was a fraud. An English-language 14-minute trailer on YouTube shows an amateur cast performing a wooden dialogue of insults disguised as revelations about Muhammad, whose obedient followers are presented as a cadre of goons. It depicts Muhammad as a feckless philanderer who approved of child sexual abuse, among other overtly insulting claims that have caused outrage.

Muslims find it offensive to depict Muhammad in any manner, let alone insult the prophet. A Danish newspaper's 2005 publication of 12 caricatures of the prophet triggered riots in many Muslim countries.


Though Bacile was apologetic about the American who was killed as a result of the outrage over his film, he blamed lax embassy security and the perpetrators of the violence.

"I feel the security system (at the embassies) is no good," said Bacile. "America should do something to change it."

A consultant on the film, Steve Klein, said the filmmaker is concerned for family members who live in Egypt. Bacile declined to confirm.

Klein said he vowed to help Bacile make the movie but warned him that "you're going to be the next Theo van Gogh." Van Gogh was a Dutch filmmaker killed by a Muslim extremist in 2004 after making a film that was perceived as insulting to Islam.

"We went into this knowing this was probably going to happen," Klein said.

Bacile's film was dubbed into Egyptian Arabic by someone he doesn't know, but he speaks enough Arabic to confirm that the translation is accurate. It was made in three months in the summer of 2011, with 59 actors and about 45 people behind the camera.

The full film has been shown once, to a mostly empty theatre in Hollywood earlier this year, said Bacile.



Read it on Global News: Global News | In depth: How Sam Bacile’s ‘Innocence of Muslims’ film sparked international events