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Director defends Zero Dark Thirty torture

Los Angeles - Director Kathryn Bigelow is defending the torture scenes in her Oscar-nominated film Zero Dark Thirty, saying torture was an undeniable part of the hunt for Osama bin Laden after the terrorist attacks on 11 September 2001.

Bigelow also said critics should perhaps direct their anger at those who ordered US torture policies instead.

The film opens by declaring it is based on firsthand accounts of actual events.

But Senator Dianne Feinstein and other lawmakers have criticised the film as misleading for suggesting that torture led to bin Laden's location. Lawmakers asked Sony Pictures to attach a disclaimer that the film is fictional.

"Experts disagree sharply on the facts and particulars of the intelligence hunt, and doubtlessly that debate will continue," Bigelow wrote in the Los Angeles Times on Wednesday.

'War, obviously, isn't pretty'

The comments were Bigelow's most explicit reaction to the controversy so far.

"As for what I personally believe, which has been the subject of inquiries, accusations and speculation, I think Osama bin Laden was found due to ingenious detective work," she continued.

"Torture was, however, as we all know, employed in the early years of the hunt. That doesn't mean it was the key to finding bin Laden. It means it is a part of the story we couldn't ignore."

She added, "War, obviously, isn't pretty, and we were not interested in portraying this military action as free of moral consequences."

Controversial practices

Last week, Sony Pictures co-chair Amy Pascal responded forcefully to a Zero Dark Thirty anti-Oscar campaign waged by Ed Asner and other Hollywood actors, saying "to punish an artist's right of expression is abhorrent".

Bigelow and Zero Dark Thirty screenwriter Mark Boal had said previously that they "depicted a variety of controversial practices and intelligence methods that were used in the name of finding bin Laden.

"The film shows that no single method was necessarily responsible for solving the manhunt, nor can any single scene taken in isolation fairly capture the totality of efforts the film dramatises," they said.

Zero Dark Thirty is set for release in South Africa on 15 February.

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