EA' ADAT KHALK

What makes a terrorist? In Zarqa, Jordan's second-largest city with close to one million people, it is a much-debated question. Zarqa's political Islamists are a powerful force in this industrial center, and it is the birthplace of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the brutal leader of Al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia, who was killed by American forces in 2006. Many in town knew al-Zarqawi, many in his family remain, and Zarqa continues to be a source of new recruits to the jihadist cause. Inspired by his reporting on al-Zarqawi and Al-Qaeda for international news agencies, Jordanian/Palestinian filmmaker Mahmoud al Massad returns to Zarqa, where he grew up, to make Recycle. With ravishing cinematography that belies the unforgiving landscape, Massad charts the daily life of a religious Islamic man trying to survive in one of Zarqa's poorest neighbourhoods.