Oscars 2015: Using the Big Screen to Battle Extremism

— -- As the White House races to figure out ways to battle extremism around the globe, an African filmmaker has taken the fight in another, unusual direction: to the big screen with an Oscar-nominated movie about the tragedy of life under extremist rule.

“Timbuktu,” made by Malian-Mauritanian director Abderrahmane Sissako, uses the occupation of northern Mali by an al Qaeda affiliate in 2012 as a backdrop for Sissako’s exploration of the inhumanity of living under the terrorists’ rule. Sissako told Variety last year that he was spurred to make the movie after hearing the story of a woman who was stoned to death there.

The resulting film, set in the desert city of Timbuktu, illustrates the militants’ effort to destroy the diverse history and culture of the city and replace it with their extreme interpretation of religious law. The film features violent, often dim-witted, extremists, as well as characters, many based on real people, who attempt to defy them. A woman refuses to wear gloves as gun-toting religious police demand of her. A local imam scolds militants for bringing guns into the mosque.

“Islam has been held hostage,” Sissako told Variety. “It’s so absurd that barbarian acts like this one are still happening today. We can’t just turn a blind eye and do nothing about it.”

The movie was nominated for best foreign language film, but was beaten out Sunday by the Polish drama “Ida”. Previously, “Timbuktu” had won a slew of Cesar awards in France, including Best Film and Best Director.

But Sissako is hardly the only one using a major creative outlet to lash out at radicalism back home.

“Burka Avenger,” a Pakistani superhero cartoon, was conceived in 2010 as a reaction to the attacks on girls’ schools by the Taliban in northern Pakistan, according to show creator Haroon Rashid, also known simply by his first name as a pop musician in Pakistan.

“I just imagined a schoolteacher standing up to them [the Taliban],” Haroon told ABC News last week. “I didn’t want her using guns, so she uses books and pens to beat up the bad guys. It’s literally ‘the pen is mightier than the sword.’”

In the animated series, a schoolteacher named Jiya teaches local children by day and dons a burka-like disguise by night to fight evil, including villains who want to shut down the school or prevent children from getting polio vaccinations.

“The idea is to provide children with role models, and it’s great to have some fictional role models who can be sort of infallible,” Haroon told ABC News. “It’s about women’s empowerment, and even conservative Muslims in Pakistan like the show.”

“Burka Avenger” won a Peabody Award last year.

The U.S. and its partners in counter-terrorism have dropped countless bombs on terrorist targets since 9/11 – including thousands against the newly prominent terror group ISIS in the past few years – and have attempted to convince young people of the perils of extremism. But U.S. officials say recruits keep pouring in to terror groups like ISIS, with no sign of abating.

Creative efforts like “Timbuktu” and “Burka Avenger”, however, can be an important part of the fight as well, specifically because the anti-extremism message isn’t coming from the U.S. government, according to Matt Olsen, former Director of the National Counterterrorism Center.

“These types of messages coming from credible voices exposing ISIS as a perversion of Islam can make a difference to young people,” said Olsen, now a consultant for ABC News. “Those artists and producers in those local communities, they know best what messages are going to resonate.”

“It’s not going to be a panacea,” he said, “but it can certainly make a difference.”

As “Burka Avenger” launches its second season, Haroon told ABC News he hoped the show was having a real effect on children’s lives.

“There are so many talented artists, musicians, writers, who are all working to express themselves and put out positive messages,” he said. “We can’t give up on the future.”

A day before the Oscars were decided, Sissako told NPR his movie too had a mission: to show “first of all, that Islam was not [what] the jihadists say it is.”

“I showed that we can show that a religion can be hijacked and that’s the case,” he said.