Niskayuna native’s documentary up for an Oscar; Tells story of kindness preventing Islamic Center bombing (w/ video)

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Niskayuna-native Joshua Seftel, right, and Malala Yousafzai pose for a portrait last month. (AP Photo/Chris Pizzello)

 

NISKAYUNA – “Stranger at the Gate,” an Oscar-nominated documentary from Niskayuna native Joshua Seftel, features a new kind of hero.

 

“Their superpower is love and compassion and the ability to forgive,” Seftel said.

 

He’s talking about people like Bibi Bahrami, Dr. Saber Bahrami and Jomo Williams, who, through their kindness and compassion, help prevent veteran Richard “Mac” McKinney from carrying out his plan to set off an I.E.D. at the Islamic Center of Muncie, Ind.

 

The film, which Seftel directed, was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary Short Film. The story unfolds through interviews with McKinney, Williams, Bibi Bahrami and others, in a packed 30 minutes.

 

It opens with McKinney’s stepdaughter, Emily, who says “Most of the time when I tell people this story, they tell me that they don’t believe me.”

 

McKinney, a broad-shouldered white combat veteran, had fought in Iraq and Afghanistan and was suffering from PTSD when he returned to his home in Muncie in 2006. In the film, he talks about how he’d been trained to see Muslim people as the enemy and how enraged he was to see them in his community.

 

Out of what he felt was a need to protect his country and family, he started making a plan to bomb the local Islamic center. All that changed when he visited the center on a scouting mission and he met the Bahramis. The couple, both refugees from Afghanistan, helped found the center. He also met Williams, a Black convert. Though McKinney was obviously troubled, the three of them welcomed him to the center and it sparked a major change in McKinney.

 

The film covers McKinney’s account of his transformation and conversion to Islam. It also gets into the lives of the Bahramis, the hardships they’ve faced and how they’ve helped the community around them.

 

“It was just a story about compassion, love and the power of those things, the power of love and compassion to be able to change people for the better. Being involved in those interviews was really intense and inspiring. The whole crew, I remember, we were crying through the interviews,” Seftel said.

 

The 1986 Niskayuna High School graduate has previously directed documentaries and television shows such as “Queer Eye for the Straight Guy,” and the 2008 feature film “War, Inc.,” which starred John Cusack and Marisa Tomei.

 

While he’d initially planned to be a doctor like his father, the late Dr. Leroy Seftel, who served as chief of obstetrics and gynecology at Ellis Hospital, Seftel turned to filmmaking as a way to create change and heal people.

 

“Stranger at the Gate” certainly delves into that territory. He first read about the story in a USA Today article. At the time, he was working on “Secret Life of Muslims,” a film series that grew out of the rise in Islamophobia following 9/11.

 

“The reason I was making those films [is] I’m Jewish and when I was growing up in Schenectady, I got picked on for being Jewish, especially in middle school. Kids would call me names and throw pennies at me in the hall,” Seftel said.

 

“Those memories stayed with me and then I became a filmmaker and then 9/11 happened and I saw my Muslim friends facing hate and discrimination. And I thought, Oh, I know what this is and maybe I can do something with filmmaking to help,’” Seftel said.

 

“Stranger at the Gate” is the 25th film in the “Secret Life of Muslims” series and was filmed in the summer of 2021, nearly 15 years after the events described. Most of the interviews were conducted in the basement of the Islamic Center. Beyond lending authenticity to the production, the setting also aesthetically added to the story.

 

“That basement kind of looks like a jail cell and that was part of the story . . . when you see Mac, you assume he might be in jail. That was an interesting situation where that idea converged with the location that we were given to film it and I think it helped it helped with the story,” Seftel said.

 

The film was released last year and is available to watch for free.

 

 

“We want the word to get out about this film and we want as many people to see it as possible,” Seftel said.

 

He noted that at the first screening of the film, which they held at the Islamic Center, one man stood up and said “I believe this film needs to be seen by every American.”

 

“Our feeling was the feeling of relief and delight that people seem to be really pleased with the way we told the story. That was a real high point,” Seftel remembers.

 

Sunday’s Academy Awards might just be another high point. Seftel plans to attend, along with his wife. He’ll also be joined by Nobel laureate Malala Yousafzai, who is a producer on the film, McKinney and Bibi Bahrami among others from the film.

 

“Stranger at the Gate” is up against “The Martha Mitchell Effect,” “Haulout” and “The Elephant Whisperers.” The awards start at 8 p.m.

 

In the future, Seftel, who lives in Brooklyn, plans to continue to work on the “Secret Lives of Muslims” series and is considering turning “Stranger at the Gate” into a scripted feature film.

 

To watch it and for more information visit strangeratthegate.com.

 

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Edited March 12, 2023 by aum