Director Nick Broomfield Courtesy of HanWay Films

His exposé portraits have always attracted the attention of the media. His investigation into the conspiracy theories surrounding Kurt Cobain's death in Kurt & Courtney resulted in Courtney Love threatening to sue the organizers of the Sundance Film Festival. His doc on serial killer Aileen Wournos inspired Charlize Theron's Oscar-winning turn in Monster. And now British filmmaker Nick Broomfield steps out of his comfort zone of documentary coverage to create an unflinching, harrowing drama. Battle for Haditha is based on events that unfolded on November 19, 2005 in Haditha, Iraq, when a convoy of Marines, enraged by the death of one of their own, goes on a killing spree in search of suspected insurgents. Twenty-four civilians die, including many women and children. Was this an act of legitimate self-defense or negligent homicide?

The film kicks off with several soldiers talking into the camera about their opinions on the war. One describes Iraq as the butthole of the world, the insurgents as dingleberries and the U.S. Military as a big shit coming out. Were these the words of that Marine?
Yeah, those were his words. In fact, those guys you see at the beginning of the film are ex-Marines. And so it was just them talking about themselves.

Was he given an outline of what to say? How much of the dialogue is improvised?
No. Those were long interviews. In fact, my son shot those. He was part of the crew and was very close to the Marines because he's pretty much their age. And so that put it as almost kind of documentary footage. It was just interviews with those guys.

You must have had a dilemma in staying true to the historical events with a scripted structure while trying to keep it fresh and unstaged by allowing the actors to adlib. Did you ever find these two needs negating each other, and how did you handle it?
Not really. Not really. The film is not a forensic report on what happened. I'm not saying and I don't think anyone thinks that every word that somebody says in this film was actually said on that day. I think, far more, the film is saying that this is the reason that incidents like Haditha happen: it's this kind of thinking, it's this kind of situation, it's this kind of environment that creates incidents like Haditha. Not just from the Marines' point of view, but from the Iraqi point of view, too. And it's really a film about warfare and the language of war. That's really what the film's about. Obviously we did a ton of research. We met with Marines from [the] company that was there that day. We met with survivors from the massacre; we met with members of the insurgency. There's a 6,000-page report done on what happened that day by the NCIS which I, believe it or not, pretty much read all the way through.

Eric Mehalacopoulos as Sgt. Ross in Battle for Haditha Courtesy of HanWay Films

Where did you find the ex-Marines who acted in Haditha? What criteria did you use in choosing them? Were they ex-Marines when they signed on?
Well the criteria, more than anything, was that they were in touch with their emotions. And that they were representative in a way of the Marines who were there that day, the same kinds of people. And they were people that one could relate to.

How willing or reluctant were marines, survivors and witnesses to open up about what happened that day in Haditha?
Well, it took some time. I think it was painful for all of them. So for example went down to Camp Pendleton where some of the Marines were and we spent probably 3 days with them. So you got a pretty good sense of who they were and you cut through a lot of the bullshit after the first day. You'd go over the same points and just see whether they were being consistent with what they were saying and get lots of anecdotes and stories, and talk off the point and then we went out in the evening and did other things. And I think as much as anything in a film like this, you try to get a character profile of the people, get a sense of really who these people are as human beings.