The Feeling of Being Watched

2018 • 86’ • USA

In the Arab-American neighborhood outside of Chicago where director Assia Boundaoui grew up, most of her neighbors think they have been under surveillance for over a decade. While investigating their experiences, Assia uncovers tens of thousands of pages of FBI documents that prove her hometown was the subject of one of the largest counterterrorism investigations ever conducted in the US before 9/11, code-named “Operation Vulgar Betrayal.” With unprecedented access, this film weaves the personal and the political as it follows the filmmaker’s examination of why her community fell under blanket government surveillance and pieces together a secret FBI operation, while grappling with the effects of a lifetime of surveillance. 

Director / Producer:
Assia Boundaoui

Producer:
Jessica Devaney

  • Regent Park Film Festival
    – Rogers Audience Choice Award

    Blackstar Film Festival
    – Audience Award, Best Documentary

    Camden International Film Festival
    – Audience Award, Best Documentary

    Woodstock Film Festival
    – Best Documentary
    – Best Editing

    GlobeDocs Film Festival
    – Audience Award, Best Documentary

    This Human World
    – Up and Coming, Jury Winner

    Movies That Matter Film Festival
    – Student Choice Award

    Freep Film Festival
    – Shine a Light Jury Award

    Documentary Feature Finalist 2020
    – Social Impact Media Award

    Tribeca Film Festival 2018, Competition
    – World Premiere

    HotDocs 2018
    HRWFF 2019
    Glasgow Film Festival 2019

  • “Strikes deep.” — The Hollywood Reporter

    “It’s one of the best films about the importance of journalism in a long time and should be considered required viewing.”
    — MXDWN

    “A fascinating look at the surveillance state.”— Criterion Cast

    “turns exhaustive research into an art form in her scintillating doc.”
    — The Village Voice

    “This riveting film is at once a personal story, a journalistic thriller and an essay on the nature of paranoia.”
    — The New York Times

    “Boundaoui’s smart, unsettling documentary functions both as a real-world conspiracy thriller and a personal reflection on the psychological strain of being made to feel an outsider in one’s own home.“
    — Variety

    "Startling and effective... You feel like you’re watching a ‘70s conspiracy thriller, but this is today and it’s nonfiction.”
    — LA Times

Filmmaker’s Biography

Assia Boundaoui is an Algerian-American journalist and filmmaker based in Chicago. She has reported for the BBC, NPR, PRI, Al Jazeera, VICE, and CNN. Her debut short film about hijabi hair salons for the HBO LENNY documentary series premiered at the 2018 Sundance Film Festival. She is currently a fellow with the Co-Creation Studio at the MIT Open Documentary Lab, where she is iterating her most recent work, the Inverse Surveillance Project. Assia has a Masters degree in journalism from New York University and is fluent in Arabic.