In this harrowing and unflinchingly honest short film, rapper and actor Yasiin Bey volunteers to undergo the same force-feeding procedure used on hunger-striking detainees at Guantánamo Bay. Directed by Bafta-winning filmmaker Asif Kapadia, the nearly five-minute video was released by The Guardian in July 2013 as a powerful act of protest.
Captured with stark realism, the video begins with statistics underscoring the urgency, over 100 detainees were refusing food, some enduring force-feedings twice daily.
Bey, clad in an orange jumpsuit and shackled to a feeding chair, undergoes the standard military procedure: a rubber tube is inserted through his nose, down to his stomach, replicating the physical and emotional trauma experienced by real detainees.
The result is raw, unsettling, and deeply affecting, a visceral witness to a form of treatment widely condemned as cruel, inhuman, and degrading.
American Civil Liberties Union
With riveting clarity, Kapadia transforms a political statement into immersive performance art, Bey morphs from a celebrated artist into a silenced prisoner in an instant, amplifying the message on human rights, empathy, and the ethics of state power.
